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Since the advent of computer-generated imagery (CGI) in the 1970s, digital animation has progressed incredibly swiftly towards photorealism as computer-processing has become exponentially more powerful. Today, the best CGI has escaped the ‘uncanny valley’, the strange space where humanoid objects approaching realism provoke a sense of eerie unease in the viewer. In his video essay Goodbye Uncanny Valley, the UK artist and animator Alan Warburton explores where we are going now that the virtual and the real are increasingly indistinguishable to our eyes. Probing everything from the latest in Hollywood blockbusters to the next wave of political propaganda and the frontiers of digital art, Warburton foresees a future where the possibilities of distorting and augmenting our experience of reality with CGI are endless – for better or worse.
Video by Alan Warburton
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Wellbeing
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Chemistry
Why do the building blocks of life possess a mysterious symmetry?
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Rituals and celebrations
A whale hunt is an act of prayer for an Inuit community north of the Arctic Circle
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Cosmology
Tiny, entangled universes that form or fizzle out – a theory of the quantum multiverse
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Music
The peculiar beauty of a song caught between composition and improvisation
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Rituals and celebrations
A beginner’s guide to a joyful Persian tradition of spring renewal and rebirth
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Astronomy
The history of astronomy is a history of conjuring intelligent life where it isn’t
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Politics and government
How it looked to Afghan women to see the Taliban return to power
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Love and friendship
Love looks a bit different for a chain-smoking couple in a small apartment
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