Final Project Proposal

For my final project I will be exploring the uncanny valley. The valley can be described as a phenomena in which human-like replicas that appear very convincing, but are not quite human, can create feelings of eeriness and revulsion among viewers. I find the valley itself as a concept to be fascinating. In terms of my own experiences as a computer science major (who likes to consider himself involved in the art world), I am looking to create a dialogue that explores and expresses the often impersonal and alienating tech world and its jarring intersection and reformation of a process as intimate as analog photography.

I will be incorporating image capturing methods from my senior thesis to create these images. 3D meshes will be rendered from a point cloud that is captured with the depth sensors on an xbox kinect. The rendered mesh is then manipulated with a 3D modeling software called blender in order to produce the desired 3D models.  Post-processing of these models is done to produce a flat image in the form of a stereoscopic anaglyph like the test image on the left. The final image will be printed in gum bichromate in order to preserve the red and blue channels so that the images may be viewable in 3D with an appropriate pair of red-blue glasses.