Dissolving Realities: Uncanny Valley
Unity, LiDAR 3D scan, Blender
2022
Navigation Video of the Uncanny Valley... it is an actual space. (Playable experience)
VR walkthrough of the virtual world: the Uncanny Valley
Welcome to the Uncanny Valley explores the relationship between fascination and the uncanny, specifically, how I can evoke feelings of the uncanny in visual media and reality, learning from filmmakers, Gothic Literature, movies and animation. The research method captures the uncanny element from the angle and perspective of its influence upon humans and their fear – how the uncanny incites fear and its mechanisms. This project is a body of work that examines the close proximity between the realistic and the eerie. In this piece, I have 3d scanned my everyday life and places like school hall, bus, underground station, and my own design process of making plaster face cast. I have imagined the Uncanny valley as not just a theory but an actual place, and I have experienced it first hand.
Installation
Artefacts on display
Weirdly, as a child, I wished I had an identical twin and shared a special bond with her because I always felt ignored. However, as I grew up, the uncanniness of meeting someone who looked exactly like me started to get on my nerves. Although this fear has waned away as I grow older, sometimes, my reflection creeps me out when I am unaware of a mirror nearby. The terror is ingrained in my brain when I look too hard at myself.
When doing the project, I faced my own fear. I created a body of work that examines the close proximity between the realistic and the eerie by exploring the deviations from the faces depending on the shrinkage of alginate mould. During the process, I researched and became familiar with biomaterials. I also found an adapted, cheap, simplified gelatin recipe that functions similarly to silicone but in a formulation that can be remelted, reused, and recycled.
Dissolving Realities: Point Cloud Experiments
Camera AR track, LiDAR 3D scan, Blender, Sound Design
2022
I like to 3D scan liminal places in daily life to document extra dimensions of reality, turning mundane life into cinema. Moreover, I want to warp how we see reality by building tension with camera movement. I capture the surreal yet daunting world of our hazy dreams and memories and let people wander in this place where the rules of the universe do not apply. I embrace photogrammetry's fuzzy texture and imprecise nature instead of trying to get close to photorealism. I find this more authentic to reality as there are different ways of seeing it, and this is how I see it. Now seek your broken and missing jigsaw puzzles in this space, and as you revisit it, the old memories are revived piece by piece.
Above is the documentation of the process in making the project.