With all our talk about photo real rendering, and the uncanny valley we seem to have missed this bizzare manifestation of our cultural desires for "real fakes." Real Dolls and now, Real Babies are a growing phenomena. They are inanimate, but extremely life-like figures of grown women and babies that people buy to, essentially, take the place of a real person in their life. Men describe having very real emotional relationships to the dolls, and women describe experiencing the same emotional attachment to the babies.
The question we need to deal with is not how to creat "real" renderings of people and places for our entertainment media, but what happens when we do? Seemingly sane, normal people are leaving the tv on for the roomba, and let Pleo tug at their heartstrings, but what happens when these smart toys take on a human shape?
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A recent SCA Critical Studies PhD graduate, Allison De Fren, has directed a couple of very interesting documentaries on this subject in conjunction with a written dissertation. Her early short A.S.F.R (for alt.sex.fetish.robots) is available online: http://www.ulinkx.com/video/1845435
Her recently completed feature documentary, The Mechanical Bride, is not yet in widespread distribution, but has screened at festivals and conferences. Both films offer an intelligent, sensitive investigation of the lines between human and non-human and the eroticization of technology in human form.
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October 7, 2008 3:41 PM
Posted on October 7, 2008 15:41