Approaching the uncanny valley from the other direction
Fashion photo retouching (i.e. high-brow Photoshopping) gets the New Yorker treatment with this story on retoucher Pascal Dangin, one of the best in the business.
In the March issue of Vogue Dangin tweaked a hundred and forty-four images: a hundred and seven advertisements (Estée Lauder, Gucci, Dior, etc.), thirty-six fashion pictures, and the cover, featuring Drew Barrymore. To keep track of his clients, he assigns three-letter rubrics, like airport codes. Click on the current-jobs menu on his computer: AFR (Air France), AMX (American Express), BAL (Balenciaga), DSN (Disney), LUV (Louis Vuitton), TFY (Tiffany & Co.), VIC (Victoria’s Secret).
The article touches too briefly on the tension between reality and what ends up in the magazines and advertisements. As Errol Morris points out on his photography blog, it is often difficult to find truth in even the most vérité of photographs. Even so, the truth seems to be completely absent from Madonna’s recent photo spread in Vanity Fair that was retouched by Dangin, especially this one in which a 50-year-old Madonna looks like a recent college graduate who’s never lifted a weight in her life.
The uncanny valley comes into play here, which we usually think of in terms of robots, cartoon characters, and other pseudo anthropomorphic characters attempting and failing to look sufficiently human and therefore appearing creepy and scary. With an increasing amount of photo retouching, postproduction in film, plastic surgery, and increasingly effective makeup & skin care products, we’re being bombarded with a growing amount of imagery featuring people who don’t appear naturally human. People who appear often in media (film & tv stars, models, cable news anchors & reporters, miscellaneous celebrities, etc.) are creeping down into the uncanny valley to meet up with characters from The Polar Express. I don’t know about you but a middle-aged Madonna made to look 24 gives me the heebie-jeebies. Perhaps the familar uncanny valley graph needs revision:
Originally by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org on May 13, 2008, 1:14pm
TV vs. LOLcats
Clay Shirky gave a talk entitled ‘Gin, Television, and Social Surplus‘ at the Web 2.0 conference, April 23, 2008. He makes some interesting points about the cognitive surplus that has been soaked up by TV for the last 50 years and is now, ostensibly, being put to better use on the internet. His talk also feeds into one of the hot topics of the moment, user-generated content. Rather than ‘waste’ time watching TV; to use TV to soak up their free time and avoid cognitive thought, people are posting articles to their blogs, editing wikipedia, making lolcats. Is this kind of participatory media more ‘worthwhile’ and valuable than catching up on the latest episodes of skins and lost? I think TV can still provide the opportunity for people to get together and discuss topics that they may not otherwise have approached. Even with ‘watercooler conversation’ disappearing due to the increasing popularity of on-demand TV services, PVRs and bit-torrent, ‘cult’ TV shows such as Lost, Family Guy, Scrubs etc. still provide that platform for hot-topic discussion.
However, is it possible that the internet provides a more productive and participatory platform on which to spend the ‘cognitive surplus’?
