Computational media, particularly software systems working through massive amounts of data, are transforming the meaning of the uncanny that Freud tied to a return of repressed memories, desires, and experiences to their anticipation. This course examines how the uncanny, as Freud understood it, has transformed in aesthetic sensibilities from the uncanny feeling we develop when confronted with robots that are too lifelike, or when we experience a déjà vu to questioning whether our responses to current technologies are subjective or automated—automated by reducing one’s subjectivity to data patterns, and using them to design objects that would thereby elicit one’s genuinely subjective (but effectively preset) response. We will examine three current topics influenced by Freud’s seminal essay on the uncanny: Technologies of the Uncanny; The Deepfake and facial recognition technologies; and Immersive media.
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Seminar: Technologies of the Uncanny
Tue, Oct 15, 202412:30 pm to 2:30 pm -
Seminar: Immersive Media and the Uncanny
Wed, Oct 16, 202412:30 pm to 2:30 pm -
Public Talk: “Spectral Forensics: The Haunted Spaces of VR-Film”
Thu, Oct 17, 202412:00 pm
Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli is a professor of Film, Television and Digital Media at UCLA. She is the author of Unmaking Fascist Aesthetics (University of Minnesota Press, 2001), Mythopoetic Cinema (Columbia University Press, 2017), and Digital Uncanny (Oxford University Press, 2019). She is currently working on a co-authored book with Martine Beugnet, “The Trouble with Ghosts: Film Television and Other Spectral Media” (forthcoming from Oxford University Press).
Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny” (“Das Unheimliche” 1919)
Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli. “Epilogue: Uncanny Aesthetics,” from Digital Uncanny (2019)
Grant Bollmer. “Empathy Machines,” Media International Australia, Vol. 165.1 (2017): 63-76.
Lisa Nakamura. “Feeling Good about Feeling Bad: Virtuous Virtual Reality and the Automation of Racial Empathy,” Journal of Visual Culture, 19.1 (2020): 47-64.