Folly & Triumph: 2012

Wednesday, 15 February 2012

Prosthetics and the Uncanny

Below is an excerpt form a text I found

"Understanding of “the new body”

Despite promising technology and the potential

growth of the market, we are still stuck with the

general imagery of prosthetics; uncanny and

unnatural. This may hinder possible exploration of

the patientʼs lifestyle, but mostly, it will not mitigate

the patientʼs fear of living as a handicapped

person. Why is this all happening?

1) A super human, robots, or in between

What we have seen in the media is the Six Six

Million Dollar Man accomplishing the mission

regardless his glamorous “handicaps”, however

this does not convey the image of RoboCop or

Terminator, which most of the actual prosthetic

legs look like. Unfortunately, this gap between the

ﬁctional fantasy and reality is not getting smaller

with current technology.

Donald E. Hall argues that “the sight alone of the

whole form of the human body gives the subject

an imaginary mastery over his body... which

entirely structures his fantasy life.”4 What you see

is what you are, yet the problem here is, it is not

who you are. As technologies mimic human

performance with more accuracy, there are

growing chances of negative reactions5 from the

people who look at the artiﬁcial limbs, because of

not only the prosthetics being made out of carbon

ﬁber tubes, mechanical parts, or a skin toned

silicone cover, but also the conﬂict between two

ideas: the prosthetics are to replace the missing

form and the function”, yet we do not believe that

humanness can be replaced. Until this “social

negotiation”6 is settled, viewers will struggle with

intense emotions trying not to compromise the

selfhood over artiﬁcial body. Production of the

human-looking artiﬁcial limb could be a solution,

but the technology has not reached that level of

perfection yet."

The full text can be found here

Tuesday, 14 February 2012

Bespoke prosthetics

Found at: http://blog.ponoko.com/2011/11/07/challenging-the-uncanny-by-3d-printing-prosthetics/

"The market for false limbs is perhaps one that doesn't attract designers quite as much as it should. Fake arms and legs suffer from something called the"uncanny valley" in that the more realistic they become, the more uncomfortable they are for people to look at. It's bad enough being short of one arm or leg, but to have people engaged in conversation with you and then suddenly realise you've got a fake limb... that's what the uncanny valley is all about.

This area of design seems to be the preserve of engineers and medics. Maybe it's time for, say, jewellery designers to get in on the act?

Anyway Norwegian industrial design student Hans Alexander Huseklepp has come up with a new take which seems to avoid the valley by being up-front about its "falseness".

And what's more, it's got a digital watch built in to the wrist."

Found at:http://design-cultures.blogspot.com/2009/02/prosthetics-avoid-uncanny-valley.html