Uncanny Valley

The 'uncanny valley' refers to the hypothesis that human beings react in a certain way when presented with something which has human qualities but is not actually human, such as, a robot/humanoid. 



In 'Exploring the uncanny valley of how brains react to humanoids' (http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-07/19/uncanny-valley-tested) Mark Brown states that when a person is presented with a humanoid robot, "the brain" cannot "compute the incongruity between the android's human-like appearance and its robotic motion" which causes a "drop in likeability as onscreen characters and humanoid robots step too far towards being human-like"; this change in response is the 'valley'. 

This suggests that recognising the uncanny is universal, shared by all and our reaction, uncontrollable. Once one understands the reasoning behind the 'uncanny' and the feeling of unease, one can learn how to provoke said feelings; something we will do within our piece.