Last year I wrote about the uncanny aura of “Cinemagraphs” — a.k.a. “animated GIFs” in a posting called “Eternal Moments and Smoking Billboards”. I made the point that these images are “an uncanny artform, because it literally “brings to life” still frames — and while this may in some ways be more apparent in stop-motion… Continue reading Reanimating Dead Photos with New Media Animation
Tag: phantasmagoria
Strange Rain: An Uncanny Interactive Story for the iPad
STRANGE RAIN is a new iphone/ipad application (aka “app”) by Erik Loyer at opertoon.com that, simply, simulates looking through “a skylight on a rainy day.” Rain falls from the cloudy abyss “above” the viewer to splatter down on the glass of the device. Tilt the device and the atmosphere tilts back, too, maintaining a 3-dimensional… Continue reading Strange Rain: An Uncanny Interactive Story for the iPad
Lomography and the Uncanny
“Archaeological Photography, the Uncanny Valley, and Lomography” by Colleen Morgan touches on the way documentary images of archaeological sites use particular photographic techniques to produce an uncanny effect (whether consciously or not). I hadn’t heard of “lomography” before, which Morgan describes: “lomography…employs low-quality toy cameras for an intentionally “bad” photograph that is blurry, off-color with light… Continue reading Lomography and the Uncanny
Pop Phantasmagoria
Neat find: Professor Heard’s Magic Latern Shows is a traveling act that nostalgically recreates the “phantasmagoria” of the 18th & 19th centuries for contemporary audiences. (I learned about Heard’s show via his article, “The Lantern of Fear” published by Grand Illusions, a fun online shop for offbeat science toys, uncanny gizmos, and illusionary devices.) As… Continue reading Pop Phantasmagoria
Autonomous Improv and the Player Piano Effect
Wade Marynowsky’s weblog, Autonomous Mutations, highlights current uncanny art projects and other manifestations of das Unheimliche and is full of fantastic and unique examples of the aesthetic (like Karakuri ningyo), links to Machine art, and also references to uncanny theory. I say he features the “aesthetic” of the uncanny because his blog is an offshoot… Continue reading Autonomous Improv and the Player Piano Effect