The TV Tropes Wiki is a useful community-built resource of common plot elements on television shows, which illustrates the high degree of scholarship and close reading that fan culture is capable of producing. It reads like a folklorist’s taxonomy. The majority of the site’s “tropes” — which they define as “devices and conventions that a… Continue reading Weirdness Isolation and Sunnydale Syndrome
Category: Theory
Theoretical musings about the uncanny. Includes scholarship, articles, presentations, exhibitions and books on theories of The Uncanny.
Devil’s Horns and the Evil Eye
A little known fact (to me, anyway…and it may not be a fact at all) about signs of the horns (aka “Devil’s Horns” aka “the Goat” aka “Satan Fingers”): Though not necessarily the first to ever use [horned hand gestures] in a “rock” setting, [heavy metal singer Ronnie James] Dio was without question the one… Continue reading Devil’s Horns and the Evil Eye
Android Science and the Uncanny Valley
In addition to sharing his published research online on his website, Karl F. MacDorman has a series of youtube videos from his presentation on the the “uncanny valley” in android science, given at the 2007 NMC Summer Conference , hosted by the Indiana University School of Informatics (June 6, 2007). Below is part VII of the lecture. Mind… Continue reading Android Science and the Uncanny Valley
“Uncanny Media” Conference
Uncanny Media is “An International Conference on the Gothic Shadows of Mediation” being held next month on Aug 7-9, 2008 in Utrecht, Netherlands. With keynote speakers like Fred Botting (author of Gothic) and guest authors like Patrick McGrath (author of Trauma and The Grotesque), in addition to numerous academic panels, performances, and various gothic lifestyle… Continue reading “Uncanny Media” Conference