Browsing by Subject "Realism"

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    Chikamatsu, Mori, and the uncanny valley
    (Sage, 2025-02-06) MacDorman, Karl F.; Biomedical Engineering and Informatics, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering
    In Japan, robotics projects like Geminoid, modeled after Hiroshi Ishiguro, exhibit a fascination with creating human doubles. Yet, warnings against this also thread through Japanese thought, from the Edo-period playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1724) to the robotics professor Mori Masahiro (1927-2025). Though centuries apart, they describe the same uncanny valley phenomenon-eerie, cold, repellent feelings that arise when confronting the imperfectly human. In an interview with Hozumi Ikan, translated here, Chikamatsu presents a theory of realism exemplified through puppet theater and kabuki. He divides realism into four zones: the unreal, conceptual realism, surface realism, and the real. The unreal lacks authenticity, surface realism lacks soul, and the real lacks expressiveness. For Chikamatsu, it is conceptual realism that captivates an audience. A play's unfolding events evoke empathy and emotion through their meaning for the characters. Similarly, Mori divides realism into four zones: industrial, humanoid, and android robots, and real people. Industrial robots evoke little affinity, and androids risk appearing eerie. Though real people evoke the most affinity, androids cannot become indistinguishable from them. For Mori, only humanoid robots evoke affinity without risking uncanniness. By exploring anthropomorphism, both Chikamatsu and Mori illuminate principles for designing robots that do not unsettle but delight.
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    "Minds will grow perplexed": The Labyrinthine Short Fiction of Steven Millhauser
    (2014-02-25) Andrews, Chad Michael; Rebein, Robert, 1964-; Eller, Jonathan R., 1952-; Bourus, Terri
    Steven Millhauser has been recognized for his abilities as both a novelist and a writer of short fiction. Yet, he has evaded definitive categorization because his fiction does not fit into any one category. Millhauser’s fiction has defied clean categorization specifically because of his regular oscillation between the modes of realism and fantasy. Much of Millhauser’s short fiction contains images of labyrinths: wandering narratives that appear to split off or come to a dead end, massive structures of branching, winding paths and complex mysteries that are as deep and impenetrable as the labyrinth itself. This project aims to specifically explore the presence of labyrinthine elements throughout Steven Millhauser’s short fiction. Millhauser’s labyrinths are either described spatially and/or suggested in his narrative form; they are, in other words, spatial and/or discursive. Millhauser’s spatial labyrinths (which I refer to as ‘architecture’ stories) involve the lengthy description of some immense or underground structure. The structures are fantastic in their size and often seem infinite in scale. These labyrinths are quite literal. Millhauser’s discursive labyrinths demonstrate the labyrinthine primarily through a forking, branching and repetitive narrative form. Millhauser’s use of the labyrinth is at once the same and different than preceding generations of short fiction. Postmodern short fiction in the 1960’s and 70’s used labyrinthine elements to draw the reader’s attention to the story’s textuality. Millhauser, too, writes in the experimental/fantastic mode, but to different ends. The devices of metafiction and realism are employed in his short fiction as agents of investigating and expressing two competing visions of reality. Using the ‘tricks’ and techniques of postmodern metafiction in tandem with realistic detail, Steven Millhauser’s labyrinthine fiction adjusts and reapplies the experimental short story to new ends: real-world applications and thematic expression.