Leigh’s ACTLab blog

For project 3, I’m representing the cyborg in the form of masks. The photo doesn’t portray depth or touch, but it does show the colors and patterns and so on:

The cyborg is an idea with which most of us are familiar. In science fiction, the cyborg seems to be fantastic or bizarre, but also represents aspects of our present lives (as well as thoughts and fears about our use of technology). Donna Haraway wrote on the cyborg as overcoming artificial distinctions between the body (or the organism) and technology (link to Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto”). Common between these two views of the cyborg (depending on your interpretation) is that it challenges the ways that we view the self and technology as separate. Haraway also suggested that the cyborg challenges other simple binaries, such as nature/culture, as well as the view of the self and the “outside world” as opposed. Even the science fiction cyborg also addresses everyday questions relating to these more abstract ideas. If you accept the self as a discrete being that can be separated from external reality (which is questionable), then serious questions arise about the technology (especially medicine and communication technology) that we depend upon to shape our lives and our bodies. Is technology part of the self? Building on these views of the cyborg, I think that the cyborg reflects uncertainty about these ideas of self/world and organic/machine, not only in the abstract but also in how to interpret our daily experiences.

The cyborg is also interesting to me because I am particularly aware of my dependence on technology. While most nearsighted people claim to be blind, most of them can wear thin lenses. My vision is correctable with powerful lenses (and I can drive), but there is distortion. The lenses are also heavy. With my new excellent frames, I can keep the lenses close enough to my eyes that I can hardly even see the frames around the edges. But with most frames it would feel more like looking through cardboard tubes. This draws attention to the other forms of medical technology that I rely upon, such as inhalers and birth control. These things have a huge impact on my body and the ways that I experience life. For project 3, I wanted to capture the importance of technology in my everyday life.

I would rather be a cyborg with these excellent forms of technology than to go without (as most people would). But there is a fear that the technology will be taken away. This again draws attention to the questions of technology and the self, which are, for me, what’s uncanny about the cyborg. I portrayed this through masks, which are external to us while also representing ourselves.

But first, I wasn’t sure what I was going to create — just that I wanted to make some sort of object out of pieces of technology that we depend upon in our daily lives. I started collecting broken things from everyone I knew.

As I collected objects, the project began to take form. We watched a video in class on masks probably contributed to the idea.

After I had collected materials, I then destroyed them. I dismantled cell phones and other objects, and cut computer parts into little pieces. This was really difficult, but I got some great assistance first from my husband and then at ACTLab office hours.

After breaking the technology, then I painted some blank masks I’d picked up at a hobby store. I also glued on some expired medicines, because those are also important technologies.

Once the paint was dry, I assembled my various pieces of broken technology and started gluing them to the masks.

And so that you don’t have to scroll back up, here is the photo again of the finished masks:

While Project 1 had gone smoothly, Project 2 was more of a series of failed projects, ending with the one I ended up presenting in class.

My first, and main, idea, was to do another video. It was to be similar in some ways to the first project, but using light and shadow. I planned out what I was going to film, prepared the area, and I had a list of certain things involving light and shadow that I thought would be interesting. Then, it turned out that I lack the necessary equipment to film in dim lighting. I tried anyway, but when I got anything, the shadows didn’t look right. Even with still photo mode, with extra lighting, it was still too dark and blurry. And even in that mode, there still weren’t distinct shadows.

Next I thought to do photo manipulation. I took some photos with the intention of mixing together ordinary objects, or changing the colors to make it interesting. I also took a few photos that were interesting in other ways, like this doorway reflected in a picture frame. But I didn’t have enough still photos, and they weren’t turning out as well as I’d hoped.

I had a few other ideas that didn’t even get as far as the first two. One of them was that I would video record an ordinary conversation, then overdub it oddly with a different recording of the same conversation, or with bad voice acting. But by this point I was starting to run out of time, and I didn’t think I’d be able to get people together for the recording before the project was due.

What I ended up presenting on was the topic of murder, which I find to be uncanny. I wrote up a presentation and created an object out of craft supplies and tiny mutilated bears, although I ended up giving a different presentation. This is what I intended to present:

I think that murder is uncanny. And although not all murderers are sociopaths, and not all sociopaths are murderers, sociopaths are also uncanny. Although I don’t have a background in psychology or biology, I understand a sociopath to be a person who violates and uses others, without empathy or compassion. To me, that sort of life is very strange and definitely disturbing.

I knew someone who was murdered, so this is a topic of interest to me. I knew the victim and the murderer before the murder took place. The murder was not a surprise because the murderer, even before then, was clearly dangerous and manipulative.

Some people think instead that the survivors of the murder victim are more uncanny. This is based on stories I’ve heard or experienced, in which the ordinary people are treated as though they are strange. For instance, a supervisor once related an anecdote about a friend of hers that served on the jury for a murder trial, who was very upset to be stared at by “those people,” referring to the friends and family of the victim. I believe that many people would just rather not sympathize with those in the roles they see as less powerful, but that’s only conjecture.

It seems to me that murder itself is what’s the most uncanny in that situation. It involves some specific things that we might consider to be uncanny, such as mutilation. But more than that, murder is a terrible thing that most of us believe should never happen. It results in the irreversible loss of life and a shattered view of the world’s safety and compassion. Another aspect of this which is very interesting is also how people respond to murder, including the friends and family, law enforcement, attorneys, reporters, the general public, and more.

To illustrate that, I’ll focus on one specific serial murder. [Discuss example.]

I also created an object out of inexpensive craft supplies and an empty jar. It’s meant to illustrate the impact of fragmentation and exposure on the life of a person who knew the murder victim. For instance, the mutilated bears reflect what happened to the victim, but also show how parts of the person’s life have become gazed-upon and disjointed.

However, not being satisfied with that presentation either, I changed it at the last minute (during the break in class). Instead, I related a story about the murder trial I had attended. I mainly talked about how uncanny that experience was. I mentioned some of the things from the above presentation, but glossed over the serial murder example and skipped the object.

Due to coming up with this presentation on the spot, and due to lack of time, though, I didn’t have time to discuss some other interesting aspects of it. For instance, I would like to have discussed how that shows the degree to which our own world views impact what we find to be uncanny. For example, I would no longer find attending a murder trial to be uncanny. Having experienced that already, I’ve incorporated it into my understanding of life. This suggests that maybe the uncanny could not only be seen as a mix between the familiar and the unfamiliar, but also of the expected with the nearly-unexpected. And further, of course, the familiar and the unfamiliar are completely subjective and based on personal experience and ways of thinking. So, there are many uncannies, not just one “the uncanny.”

So, those are my many attempted second projects for this class!

For this project, I decided to film myself doing something backwards, and then reverse it, so that it wouldn’t end up looking quite right. I was hoping that this would turn out to be uncanny. I decided I’d film myself preparing a meal and eating it, because I thought something that was everyday would look more uncanny if it was a little strange. It didn’t turn out very creepy, so then I added whispering sounds to it. Here’s the video:

This is the process I followed, in pictures.

After coming up with the idea, I made a storyboard (or something similar). It was really helpful because then I was able to make sure to record all of the raw footage I needed at once.

This one is just a picture we took right after we finished filming. It was difficult to keep the cats out of the way when we were filming!

After that, I loaded everything into iMovie HD for editing. Then I reversed it, reduced the saturation, and added some sounds that I recorded separately.

Above is a sample of some raw footage that we didn’t use (partly because of the cat that appears briefly, which was distracting).

That’s about it!