Hands of AI
Hands of AI project arises from a reflection on the importance of gesture, drawing inspiration from the Uncanny Valley theory formulated in 1970 by robotics researcher Masahiro Mori. According to this study, as a robot's realism increases—meaning it appears more and more human—there is a corresponding gradual increase in our empathetic reaction, until a point of extreme realism is reached, where its almost perfectly human appearance instead provokes revulsion. Furthermore, movement, as opposed to stillness, enhances this reaction of empathy and disgust.
In the 2014 short film Hands of Bresson by Kogonada, the director explores the meaning of hands and movements by editing together a series of shots from Robert Bresson’s films, highlighting the importance and poetry of gestures.
In this project, I asked artificial intelligence to create and subsequently animate images of cinematic inspiration depicting hands: their complexity challenges the AI, which struggles to reproduce their form, function, and meaning.
Hands, featured in numerous masterpieces of art, allow us to express emotions, communicate, create, and act; they enable subjects to connect with the external world and with others. The hands produced by the AI, at once familiar and strange, human and non-human, evoke the concept of the uncanny, which in Freudian terms refers to the unsettling that arises from something we have known for a long time.
At first glance, these hands may resemble our own, but a closer look reveals significant distortions and a gestural quality devoid of meaning. In the future, it is almost certain that artificial intelligence will no longer have these problems. What will happen then?
*The project was created while attending the IED Photography course.
In the 2014 short film Hands of Bresson by Kogonada, the director explores the meaning of hands and movements by editing together a series of shots from Robert Bresson’s films, highlighting the importance and poetry of gestures.
In this project, I asked artificial intelligence to create and subsequently animate images of cinematic inspiration depicting hands: their complexity challenges the AI, which struggles to reproduce their form, function, and meaning.
Hands, featured in numerous masterpieces of art, allow us to express emotions, communicate, create, and act; they enable subjects to connect with the external world and with others. The hands produced by the AI, at once familiar and strange, human and non-human, evoke the concept of the uncanny, which in Freudian terms refers to the unsettling that arises from something we have known for a long time.
At first glance, these hands may resemble our own, but a closer look reveals significant distortions and a gestural quality devoid of meaning. In the future, it is almost certain that artificial intelligence will no longer have these problems. What will happen then?
*The project was created while attending the IED Photography course.
