Anthropomorphobia « NextNature.net

Posts Tagged ‘Anthropomorphobia’

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Friendly Vending Machine

Designer Guus Baggermans was quite annoyed by the clumsy impoliteness of current vending machines, that typically require you to enter some abstract number to select your drink or candy, which is then rudely dumped in the bin at the bottom of the machine – forcing you to bend down to get your treat. He decided to design something better.

For his master graduating project at TU/e Industrial Design he created a vending machine that should interact with the customer on a more ‘human’ level. Inspired by his colleagues Chris Heger and Sjef Fransen, who during a workshop created a hilarious scenario on future food that would fight for the customers attention (crappy video alert), Guus arrived at his concept of a ‘Friendly Vending Machine’.

As you walk by the machine, the cans will follow you and try to get your attention. The user can interact without using any buttons, or browsing menus. Once you decided which drink to buy you slide a coin in the machine after which the tube ingeniously slides opens – It is almost like a ballet – allowing you to grab your treat. The machine is adjusted to recognize a potential customer at a distance of six meters.

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Koert van Mensvoort
on 26/01/10 2 Comments »
Tags
- Anthropomorphobia | Sentient Spaces | supermarket
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Lowtech Plastic Surgery

So this is what you get when artists Lucyandbart practice their low-tech plastic surgery techniques on visitors of the MU gallery in Eindhoven. We are clueless on whether it was actually their objective to end up in the blend between tribal Africa & Beverly Hills. Peculiar image of the week.
Koert van Mensvoort
on 20/01/10 Comments »
Tags
- Anthropomorphobia | Back-to-the-Tribe | manipulating-growth | Manufactured-Bodies | Plastic-Fantastic
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Monkeys fall into the ‘Uncanny Valley’ too

The uncanny valley, a phrase coined by Japanese robotic researcher Masahiro Mori nearly three decades ago, describes the uncanny feeling that occurs when people look at representations designed to be as human-like as possible – whether computer animations or androids – but somehow fall short. It turns out monkeys have that too.

In an attempt to answer deeper questions about the evolutionary basis of communication, Princeton University researchers have found that macaque monkeys also fall into the uncanny valley, exhibiting this reaction when looking at computer-generated images of monkeys that are close but less than perfect representations.

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Koert van Mensvoort
on 08/01/10 Comments »
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- Anthropomorphobia | Fake-nature | Manufactured-animals | Plastic-Fantastic | virtual-for-real
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HP Computers are Racist

These two co-workers found out the face tracking feature of the utterly advanced HP webcam will not recognize or track black faces.

Hewlett Packard says it’s because the program doesn’t respond to “insufficient foreground lighting.” Too bad for those born without “insufficient foreground lighting”? Amazing, what technorethoric euphemisms people come up with to justify racism these days.

So far for the vain hope that computer systems could overcome human defects and bring justice and equality to mankind. Pity. Thanks Michel.
Koert van Mensvoort
on 05/01/10 8 Comments »
Tags
- Anthropomorphobia | Sentient Spaces | Technorhetoric | Wild-systems
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Deliver us from Skeuomorph Prosthetics

No, this is not another example in our fake for real series, comparing an artificial with a human hand. Rather, you are looking at twice the same hand: with and without its casing. The design of artificial hands has improved significantly over time and the depicted Fluidhand, created by researchers from Karlsruhe, is perhaps the most advanced prosthetic hand available today.

Yet, one wonders why the designers or artificial limbs always stick to the somewhat boring and predictable simulations of the human limbs they are replacing. If you have lost your hand and you need a prosthesis, why no grasp the opportunity to go for an upgrade?

Wouldn’t it be liberating if disabled people could receive more creative (and advanced) limb replacements? Think for example of a prosthesis with an integrated GPS–compass, MP3–player, USB–stick, smartphone or a fashionable eight finger octopus design? Yes, yes, we are aware non-prosthetic people might be slightly scared off – or even experience signs of anthorpomorphobia – at the sight of a prosthetic that doesn’t try to look like the human limb it is replacing. But then again, a faked plastic hand, that desperately tries to look like an original human hand but never really makes it, also causes uncanny feelings. So why not create something that’s better, or at least different than the real thing?

Please deliver us from the skeuomorph prosthetic designs, in which the visual appearance of the original human limb is retained merely as an ornament of a lost functionality. Wouldn’t it be much for empowering to transform the disabled into the enabled?

Related: Bionic Woman, High heels, Ear on your arm: why not?, USB finger.
Koert van Mensvoort
on 26/11/09 8 Comments »
Tags
- Anthropomorphobia | Biomimicmarketing | Bionics | Fake-for-Real | Fake-nature | Manufactured-Bodies | Plastic-Fantastic | Skeuomorph
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Facing your Car

Do cars have a face? You would be inclined to say yes immediately. And you would be right as well, because they do. Study has confirmed through a complex statistical analysis that many people see human facial features in the front end of automobiles and ascribe various personality traits to cars—a modern experience driven by our prehistoric psyches.

Designers have realized this for a long time; a lot of thought goes into designing the face of the car. It’s an important element of the design process. As Chris Bangle—former design director of the BWM Group Munich—puts it in the recent documentary Objectified: ‘You, as a person, can have lots of different faces, but with a car, you can only have one face. When you put on that face, it’s there forever. It becomes the cars expression.’

And people are very picky when it comes to choosing a car they will be driving daily for the next couple of years. ‘Cars are kind of like avatars, they’re a representative of ourselves.’, says Bangle, ‘You know, I show myself to the outside world through this car.’

It’s no mere coincidence that the rounded Volkswagen Beetle looks so cute you want to hug it, or that the BMW headlights in your rear mirror are saying ‘Get out of the way or I’ll run you over.’ Cars’ faces tend to show the personality of the car. If it’s a performance car, it should look like that. If it’s a cheap ecological car, it’s appearance should reflect that as well. This is not only the skill of the designer, but also has a strong scientific base. Dennis Slice—an associate professor who was closely involved with the study of Cars’ faces—says: ‘The most unique aspect of the study was that we were able to quantitatively link the perception of cars to aspects of their physical structure in a way that allows us to generate a car that would project, say, aggression, anger or masculinity or the opposite traits.’

Will car customization take extreme forms in the (near) future? Will we end up sending along a picture of ourselves when ordering a car, so that the head- and taillights, as well as the logo and the license plates, can be modeled after our very own face? Why not, we already get to choose most of the cars appearance, so customizing it’s face only seems natural…
Mattijs
on 19/11/09 5 Comments »
Tags
- Anthropomorphobia | On-the-Road | Symbolic-Overdrive
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Aging Barbie

You wouldn’t give it to her but Barbie is already over 50 years old. The doll made her debut at the American International Toy Fair in 1959 and has been a young girls (and gays) beauty icon for decades. Just image what Barbie would have looked like today if only she wasn’t so utterly plastic fantastic by nature. Still a pretty woman, stylish too! Peculiar image of the week (creator unknown: let us know).

Related: Beauty kit for little girls, Virtual Miss, Photoshop Beauties, Objects of desire, Real Mario, Software that ranks female beauty.
Koert van Mensvoort
on 12/11/09 Comments »
Tags
- Anthropomorphobia | Design-for-debate | Manufactured-Bodies | Plastic-Fantastic | Toys-are-Us | utopian-suburbia
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Blood Cells 2.0

Unlike many people fear that computers will overtake humans, Ray Kurzweil states that robots will merge with humans, robots the size of cells which can do the job way more efficient than our actual cells. An example on this are respirocytes; robots the size and functions of a red blood cell, but way more efficient (movie).

Respirocytes are able to store 1.51 billion oxygen molecules, 100% of which are accessible to the tissues. In contrast, our blood cells store about 1 billion of red blood cells and only 25% is accessible to the tissue. Replacing 10% of your actual red blood cells will enable you to do an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath or allows you to stay underwater for four hours.

In his TED-talk Kurzweil calls this 2020 technology. Many major steps have been made within the field of nanotechnology and Respirocytes are quite likely to be actually manufactured someday. Hence, we may anticipate some new ~~doping scandals~~ world records at the Olympics of 2020.

Related: Voyage of the bacteria bots, How biotech will drive our evolution, Craig Venter: catalyst of evolution, Build a better being.
Marcel van Heist
on 10/11/09 1 Comment »
Tags
- Anthropomorphobia | Humane-Technology | Hypernature | Manufactured-Bodies | Nanotechnology | robotics
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The Uncanny Valley of the Pussycat Dolls

Make no mistake, you’re not looking at the latest Barbie line: These are the The Pussycat Dolls. Formerly an LA ~~stripper show~~ burlesque show, now upgraded to be pop music sensation and the new face of female empowerment. With virtually every race and hair color represented, the collection of women seemed to have stepped straight out of an adolescent boy’s fantasy.

Yet, their polished perfection also has a certain unheimlich quality: The lips, the breasts, the heavily done faces, the oh-so-perfect noses, the shiny skins, the ’sculpted’ bodies. Too perfect to be human: this cannot be trusted.

Screenshot from the movie Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

Could the female pop group perhaps be the latest manufacture of Abyss creations, the Californian company known from Real Doll life-size silicone ~~sex doll~~ mannequin advertised as “the state-of-the-art for life-like human body simulation”?

The name ‘Pussycat Dolls’ certainly adds to the suspect, but then again their hit singles with titles like ‘BUTTONS‘ and ‘BEEP‘ point more in the direction of a robotics project. Perhaps professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, after his so-so attempts to create a robotic schoolteacher and doppelganger of himself, now exceeded himself with this sexy machinery? Not sure, as the comparisons go on…

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Koert van Mensvoort
on 06/11/09 2 Comments »
Tags
- Anthropomorphobia | Hypernature | Manufactured-Bodies | Plastic-Fantastic | sexy-machinery
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Suffering from Anthropomorphobia?

Anthropomorphobia is the fear of acknowledging qualities we wish to consider only human in non-human things. Sufferers from the condition used to have trouble mostly at fairs or theme parks, but as designed objects progressively aspire to maintain a human-to-human relationship with their users, the problems become more apparent in everyday life.

If you think you are vulnerable for anthropomorphobia, please DO NOT confront yourself with this interactive staring Mona Lisa-style ~~woman~~ animation created with motionportrait software. Brought to you, straight from the uncanny valley!

Related: Man shoots his lawnmower, Social Robots, Gel Remote, Let the robots do the teaching, Sexy Car, 1 whole human.
Koert van Mensvoort
on 04/11/09 Comments »
Tags
- Anthropomorphobia | Fake-nature | Manufactured-Bodies | Plastic-Fantastic
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Ear on your arm? Why not?!

For over 40 years Australian artist Stelios Arcadious Stelarc has made art with medical instruments, prosthetics, robots, virtual reality systems and biotechnology to investigate alternate, intimate and involuntary interfaces with the body. In one of the interviews he says: The assumption being that if the body was altered it might mean adjusting its awareness.

His ‘Ear on the Arm‘ piece is a full sized ear constructed of the living cells permanently placed under the skin of Stelarc’s forearm – a clear homage to the famous tissue engineered ear mouse. The microphone and sound transmitter were supposed to be inserted inside his body within the ear shaped scaffold. This ended up to be not feasible yet due to infections that electronics caused.

The vision behind the project was to generate an alternative electronically enhanced organ to better interact and operate within the World. At the same time it provokes a debate about a desire to redesign and alternate human’s body evolutionary structure.

Stelarc points out: Now we can engineer additional and external organs to better function in the technological and media terrain we now inhabit. All very well, allthough it’s perhaps a better strategy to redesign our technological environment so that it fits our existing human physique.

Related: Phone Tooth, USB finger, High Heels, How biotech will drive our evolution, Homo desktopus, Humans are the sex organs of technology.
ewes
on 18/10/09 Comments »
Tags
- Anthropomorphobia | Bionics | Design-for-debate | Designed-by-Evolution | Manufactured-Bodies
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Human Landscape

Our peculiar image of the week was created by artist Levi van Veluw, who reinvents the classical fine art of landscape painting, by moving from the traditional ‘oil on canvas’ to the use of his own face as a canvas.

By combing the romantic landscape and self-portrait genres he gives a fresh twist to the obsession inherent in the romantic landscape of recreating the world and simultaneously being part of it.

Look around you and try to find the most natural object in the room you are in now. It is you.

Related: In the Wilderness, Phone Trees, Day in the Dutch dunes, Biopresence: Human DNA trees.
Koert van Mensvoort
on 21/09/09 8 Comments »
Tags
- Anthropomorphobia | Fake-nature | Hypernature | Image-Consumption | Made-to-debate | manipulating-growth | Manufactured-Bodies | manufactured-landscapes
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Posts Tagged ‘Anthropomorphobia’

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