Beyond Mimesis

Jörg Sternagel is a scholar in media studies with a focus on media philosophy at the Universities of Konstanz and Passau. James Tobias is associate professor in the Department of English at the University of California, Riverside. Dieter Mersch is Professor Emeritus for philosophical aesthetics at Zürcher Hochschule der Künste.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Making Photography after Still Lovers, Elena Dorfman2. Pathos of the Actor, Jörg Sternagel3. Mathematical Imagery and the Aesthetic of Radical Amimetic, Dieter Mersch4. Dances With Dolls: The Uncanny as Pas de Deux, Allison de Fren5. Race, Nation, and the Uncanny as Mythical "Character of Expression", Nadja Ben Khelifa6. Pornotroping the Machine: Medial Agency, Following-Gesture, and the Cultic Artifice of ‘Technological Nature’, James Tobias7. Stay at Home: Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Casual Gaming, and Catachrestic Media Practices during the COVID-19 Pandemic, Grant Palmer8. In the Uncanny Valley of Augmented Reality, Stephan Günzel9. Carving Identities in Cyberspace: Indigenous Virtual Reality, Nicole Ku?uleinapuananioliko?awapuhimelemeleolani Furtado 10. Translating Structures of Surveillance into Technologies of Care: Counter-cognitive Assemblages, Misha Choudhry11. Artificial vs. Artistic Intelligence–A Trialogue on the (Re-)Storation of Behaviour and its Deviations, Caroline Bebek, Simon Makhali, Anna SuchardAbout the AuthorsIndex

As we are increasingly confronted with artificial agents that seem human-like, the uncanny valley question becomes more urgent. Should machines show their machine-ness, thus avoiding the problems with anthropomorphization, or should they cross borders? Focusing on dolls and robots that appear human-like and engaging with empirical psychology, Beyond Mimesis explores a number of interesting questions in this area. As a substantial contribution to the field of performance philosophy, the book guides us to modes of becoming and experimentation that are not only interesting for aesthetics but also for thinking about technology. It pushes us into a terrain in which paths are not given, a space for philosophers and dancers–and, why not, robots.