Uncanny Valley, BAC review – fascinating robotics lecture on aspects of the self

Fritz Lang’s Maschinenmensch Metropolis to Roy Batty in blade runner, there is no lack of automatons offering their different visions of the human condition, but few release the pure existential exhaustion of the narrator of strange valley.

German author Thomas Melle has agreed to have his animatronic double created for this show as part of an investigation into the elusive sense of self for someone who – like him – suffers from bipolar disorder. In the screenplay – which he co-wrote with Stefan Kaegi of Rimini Protokoll – he juxtaposes two biographies; his and Alan Turing’s. What follows is an elegant examination of how what is contrived and programmed can be as much a part of what it is to be human as what is meant to be genuine. It’s not a new argument, but it’s a skillfully executed argument, not least to manage not to mention Frankenstein.

When you enter the auditorium, the robot is sitting in the dark. As the lights slowly rise, there is an eerie feeling of birth as her hands reach out helplessly and her eyes seem to struggle to adjust to the light. Rapid developments in artificial intelligence mean that defining what a robot is is becoming increasingly complex. Yet where the dominant impression is often of a mechanized efficiency that leans towards the future, here the slightly mottled skin, the dark circles under the eyes and the nuanced contours of the voice immediately make you want to contemplate the past of this robot.

The scenario setup is that we have come to listen to a lecture whose dissection of the difference between our “natural” selves and our artificial selves will examine everything from prosthetics to neurolinguistic programming. Melle’s animatronic double — conservatively dressed in a crisp white shirt and dark sweater and pants — sits in a chair next to a table with an Apple laptop on it. Above him hangs a large screen on which is projected, very early on, a funny image of Melle as a six-year-old schoolboy grimacing at the camera. As we laugh, he wryly remarks that he can’t understand why he looked bored and annoyed when he loved school, adding “maybe we’re already actors of ourselves at the age of 6”.

The show resonates in part because it’s clearly not a dry intellectual exercise for Melle. Unlike his own challenges of living with bipolar disorder, the robot – he says – embodies something “stable” about who he is. Throughout, it feels like Melle is trying to figure out her identity by getting out of her body. When he first sees the model of his head, created by embalming it in a silicone cast, he describes it as looking like “a Roman sculpture; it historicizes something about me. With the publication of his first book “I had extracted something from the inside to be able to look at it from the outside”.

Alan Turing’s test, famously derived from the imitation game, examined whether a machine could make itself indistinguishable from a human in a conversation. Melle dwells on Turing’s experiments with machines, as well as the cruel chemical treatment he is given to “reprogram” his sexuality. His thoughts are both philosophical and empathetic, though he often lightens the tone by knocking questions back at the audience. Pointing out that Google’s reCAPTCHA is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart,” he asks to general laughter, “How are you so sure you can tick the ‘I’m not a robot? “?”

The concept of the Uncanny Valley was developed by robotics professor Masahiro Mori in 1970, to express the unease and revulsion that humans feel when looking at a robot whose appearance falls somewhere between “somewhat human” and “fully human”. Here there is no doubt about the robotic status of our narrator (created by Chiscreatures Filmeffects GmbH). While the face is fleshy and inhabited, the back of the head is left open so we can see the protruding electrodes (picture above).

It is a theatrical experience fantastically executed by the intelligent provocateur Rimini Protokoll. After a short tour at the Battersea Arts Center, it will be presented in Bonn and Dresden; hopefully, for anyone based in London with an interest in genuinely inventive theater, they’ll be back here before too long.


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