Here’s a video clip from my lecture last October at Neumann University on the Uncanny Valley. About an hour into the discussion of why androids and animatronics might creep us out, I gave this overview of “terror management theory” to explore how it applies to theories of the uncanny (das Unheimliche) and the representations of robots and androids in popular culture. This moment was followed by an analysis of various short videos, and a discussion of the film, Ex Machina — you can see the sources I drew from and some photos from the event on an earlier post on this blog.
This keynote was generously hosted by Neumann University, and kindly co-sponsored by Raw Dog Screaming Press. I would like to thank them both, as well as Dr. Bill Hamilton for inviting me out to speak with the audience, Jennifer Barnes and Guide Dog Books for promoting and supporting this talk as part of DogCon4 (and to give an advanced tease of the upcoming book). Special gratitude goes out to David Bullis (Bullwitt Media) for the video production.
I also spoke on “The Popular Uncanny” at Neumann in 2012.
