Tag: hands

The #Whoppersign, the King and the Uncanny

Kudos to the fast food chain Burger King (and their marketing team, led by VP Fer Merchado), for making a bold step in addressing the special needs of people with hearing disabilities. To celebrate the most recent American Sign Language Day (on April 15th, 2016), they ran an advertising campaign that directly targeted the deaf,… Continue reading The #Whoppersign, the King and the Uncanny

The Uncanny Valley: Expanded and Uncut! Notes on Mori’s Groundbreaking Essay

  I like to think I’m good at keeping up with research on the Uncanny, but somehow I missed an important event this June: IEEE Spectrum published the first complete English translation of Masahiro Mori’s highly influential article on “The Uncanny Valley” (originally published in what they call “an obscure Japanese journal called Energy in… Continue reading The Uncanny Valley: Expanded and Uncut! Notes on Mori’s Groundbreaking Essay

Thing Addams, Photographer

I was very excited to stumble on this TV commercial from 1985 for the Nikon One Touch instant camera. Their slogan? “It puts great photography at everybody’s fingertips.” Their mascot? A dismembered hand, of course! Thing (sometimes spelled “Thingg”) — the ambulatory hand that lives in a box and serves as a literal “handyman” to… Continue reading Thing Addams, Photographer

Late Night with Wax Figures in the Men’s Room

There was a particularly uncanny moment last night on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.  Wait for it: The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien – Wax Figures, Redux: Creepy Wax Tom Cruise Stalks Wax Fonzie In The Bathroom (removed from Vimeo) The wax/flesh boundaries are blurred in unexpected ways in that video that leave even… Continue reading Late Night with Wax Figures in the Men’s Room

The Addams Family Returns…Online

A public service announcement: The Addams Family is now streaming for FREE on YouTube, from MGM. A pastiche of horror fiction iconography — and also an indictment of the 50’s nuclear family, the conventions of the sitcom, and all things domestic — this show is perhaps one of the most interesting and clear-cut manifestations of… Continue reading The Addams Family Returns…Online

The Uncyclopedia

I love dismembered hand jokes as much as anyone else, but this creepy image grabbed my attention as the featured image of the day on Uncyclopedia — a mock Wikipedia wiki that I stumbled upon when searching the web for material on the surrealist, Rene Magritte.  At first I didn’t even realize I was ON… Continue reading The Uncyclopedia

Smoking Stunts and Growths

Wow!  This image from the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation’s (UK) anti-second hand smoke campaign stunned me for a moment, with its visual echo of my recent post about the website, Photoshop Disasters. (Via the excellent advertising watchblog, AdGoodness). In that original post, I wrote:  “We always already understand that advertising is manipulative and fake, and yet when the flaw appears,… Continue reading Smoking Stunts and Growths

Gel Remote: Object Empathy and The Tactile Uncanny

Adbusters # 78 asks “What if design stood up for itself? What if instead of bowing immediately to our demands, design gently pushed back?”  In the “Psychodesign” slideshow (by Sarah Nardi), products like Panasonic Design Company‘s experimental “Gel Remote” (above) are framed as a political use of the uncanny, animating the inanimate icons of everyday life in order to… Continue reading Gel Remote: Object Empathy and The Tactile Uncanny

Photoshop Disasters and the Fantasy of Picture Perfection

Photoshop Disasters is a funny weblog that collects flawed design elements in advertisements and elsewhere (like the above image from a Sears Catalog). The accidental amputations, bizarre hands, and other forms of freakish anatomical blunders strike a viewer as uncanny when you spot them in what would otherwise be a “picture perfect” advertisement. We always… Continue reading Photoshop Disasters and the Fantasy of Picture Perfection