David Byrne’s Singing Robot Is Deliberately Creepy

If you happen to stake to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid this summertime , you may have fare across Julio , a robot who sing in the phonation of former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne while mime the facial expressions of a human crooner . Byrne has chronicled the process of think and creating Julio on his web log , where he also discuss the significance of imitative golem , the uncanny valley , and simple machine and the individual . Click through for Byrne ’s thoughts and a video recording of the vaguely creepy-crawly automaton . Julio was constructed by David Hanson , who is perhaps good known for hisrobotic portrayal of Philip K. Dick . When Byrne decided to participate in the museum ’s “ Machines and Souls ” show , he wanted to work with Hanson because of the graphic nature of its work :

Hanson ’s robots philander with the uncanny and prove our notions of what it means to be human . They have rubbery frame made of what he calls frubber , with tiny wires on the inside that pull the “ tegument ” to mimic human facial expressions ( to an extent ) . Some of them can also make eye inter-group communication and some can carry on a weird dialogue , add to their profoundly perturbing nature . Part of what fix this human likeness so creepy is our natural desire to empathize with the robots and to ascribe to their behaviour human need and even emotions .

Byrne and Hanson resolve to get together a singing robot whose bodily movements and facial expressions would emulate that of a human engaged in the same activeness . Music is certainly Byrne ’s medium , but he believes that a telling automaton is especially surprising :

We often assume that singing is “ from the heart ” – or at least some part of it is . I myself believe that it is and it is n’t : it ’s both a developed skill ( to emote convincingly ) , and a true outpouring of emotion , as the physiological effect of singing is by nature more attached to the lounge lizard mental capacity than to the rationalizing frontal lobe . The fact that singing can engage both parts of the brain make it maybe the least likely thing one would expect a automaton to do .

Byrne further explains that the idea stemmed from his interest in roboticist Masahiro Mori ’s hypothesis of the “ unearthly valley , ” that percentage point at which a automaton is so human but at the same fourth dimension so inhuman that viewers find it repulsive :

sleep with that singing evoke an excited reaction from a listener and observer , I smell that encountering Julio might push some very odd buttons . I remember that my first encounter with Hanson ’s robot made me rethink what it means to see , to look . We think of seeing and looking as something optical , something the eyes do . But actually get word something , and recognizing it , is a lot more than that - it is the act of “ naming ” the thing the eyes are locking on to . It involve other meta head functions that often have nothing to do with eye or the muscles controlling the eye . If seeing were just the optical and heart - muscular tissue behavior , then is n’t that the same as what Jules does ? And then is n’t scorch , and display the attendant emotion , the same as what Julio does ?

Last Of Us 7 Ellie Crash