The digital uncanny and ghost effects

Ravetto‐Biagioli, Kriss

doi:10.1093/screen/hjw002

Cited by 32 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…It has been suggested that the uncanny can be understood as a ‘distinctively modern experience’ arising in relation to emerging configurations of science, technology and urbanisation (Collins and Jervis, 2008), as well as a ‘response to the regime of the programme’ as embodied in ambient information and communication technologies (Johnson, 1999). Several scholars have explored the notion of the ‘digital uncanny’, arguing that we should attend to how the uncanny may be re-articulated through different media technologies (Coyne, 2005; Ravetto-Biagioli, 2016). Ravetto-Biagioli (2019) argues that with digital technologies, the uncanny may exceed the ‘emotional intensity or embodied perception’ that was the focus of earlier psychoanalytical readings, instead ‘forcing us to reflect on our relationship with computational media’.…”

Section: Infrastructural Concernsmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Fake news’ as infrastructural uncanny

Gray

Bounegru

Venturini

2020

New Media & Society

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In this article, we examine how the social disturbance precipitated by ‘fake news’ can be viewed as a kind of infrastructural uncanny. We suggest that the threat of problematic and viral junk news can raise existential questions about the routine circulation, engagement and monetisation of content through the Web and social media. Prompted by the unsettling effects associated with the ‘fake news’ scandal, we propose methodological tactics for exploring (1) the link economy and the ranking of content, (2) the like economy and the metrification of engagement and (3) the tracker economy and the commodification of attention. Rather than focusing on the misleading content of junk news, such tactics surface the infrastructural conditions of their circulation, enabling public interventions and experiments to interrogate, challenge and change their role in reconfiguring relations between different aspects of social, cultural, economic and political life.

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Section: Infrastructural Concernsmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Fake news’ as infrastructural uncanny

Gray

Bounegru

Venturini

2020

New Media & Society

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“…The technical side of tracking refers to recognition/detection modules or systems, which are mostly researched in the field of Human-Robot-Interaction (HRI) or in computer studies. Just like any interactive technology, care robots must exhibit a certain level of aliveness and responsiveness to be placed into human contexts and to not be perceived as uncanny (Mori 2012;Ravetto-Biagioli 2016). Yet, tracking is extremely difficult to perform -ethically and technically speaking.…”

Section: On the Difference Between Tracking-as-spying And Tracking-asmentioning

confidence: 99%

On Care Robots and the Ethics of Tracking

Stamboliev¹

2020

InfTars

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This paper establishes a transdisciplinary exploration of care robots and their tracking capacity as an ethical performance. It does this to highlight the concerns around the ubiquity and availability of data in care contexts. In my attempt to scrutinise care robots beyond being humanoid and sociable actors, but instead as data tracking technologies, I link robot ethics, media and surveillance studies with posthuman and performative ethics to redefine tracking as an ethical microcosm within care robots. I do this, first, by challenging how to look at care robots and robot interactivity, particularly in reference to tracking as an ethical, not necessarily moral, question of interactivity and relationality. This angle will challenge the ethical timing and evaluation around tracking as an inherently ethical relation. Second, by arguing that the common ethical views on tracking are about concerns of privacy intrusion and data infringement while overlooking that a main ethical issue might not be a robotic intention to spy but the availability of data because of robots. Consequently, what deserves more attention in the ethics of robots is the growing ubiquity of care robots, the sensitivity of care contexts, and the acknowledgement of data appropriation; the latter being especially important considering the vulnerability of health care environments, and the growing commercial value of health data.

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“…More than a return of repressed suspicions about an animate world, the digital uncanny portends that people are both subjects and objects of this animation. According to Kriss Ravetto-Biagoli (2016: 2), ‘the digital uncanny exemplifies an irresolvable uncertainty as to whether or not those very affects and intensities amount to predesigned responses or programmed gestures triggered by various forms of algorithmically generated media stimulation.’ In a world permeated by computational processes, the digital uncanny calls embodied human agency into question. Mocap poses an optical articulation of this fear, manifesting a usurpation of human vision by digital seeing machines.…”

Section: Uncanny Space Distributed Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Catching the ghost: the digital gaze of motion capture

Chang¹

2019

Journal of Visual Culture

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Created with digital motion capture, or mocap, the virtual dances Ghostcatching and as.phyx.ia render movement abstracted from choreographic bodies. These depictions of gestural doubles or ‘ghosts’ trigger a sense of the uncanny rooted in mocap’s digital processes. Examining these material processes, this article argues that this digital optical uncanny precipitates from the intersubjective relationship of performer, technology, and spectator. Mocap interpolates living bodies into a technologized visual field that parses these bodies as dynamic data sets, a process by which performing bodies and digital capture technologies coalesce into the film’s virtual body. This virtual body signals a computational agency at its heart, one that choreographs the intersubjective embodiments of real and virtual dancers, and spectators. Destabilizing the human body as a locus of perception, movement, and sensation, mocap triggers uncanny uncertainty in human volition. In this way, Ghostcatching and as.phyx.ia reflect the infiltration of computer vision technologies, such as facial recognition, into numerous aspects of contemporary life. Through these works, the author hopes to show how the digital gaze of these algorithms, imperceptible to the human eye, threatens individual autonomy with automation.

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The digital uncanny and ghost effects

Cited by 32 publications

References 0 publications

‘Fake news’ as infrastructural uncanny

‘Fake news’ as infrastructural uncanny

On Care Robots and the Ethics of Tracking

Catching the ghost: the digital gaze of motion capture

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