This certainly is not my first venture into blogging, and for quite some time I stopped blogging altogether. I used to blog a lot about movies, and though this blog will certainly cover movies quite a bit, I’ve stopped one big part of what I was doing before: criticizing. The more I watched documentaries and read stories about art from the perspective of artists, it occurred to me that the critic criticizes because the critic can’t do what the artist does. The critic (at least many of critics) dumps on art and artists to be recognized without having to create anything original, and because positive criticism places the critic in a vulnerable position where he has to defend the merits of that which he is praising. Negative criticism doesn’t require the critic to provide answers about what is right, merely answers about what is wrong. Negativity also lends itself better to humor, which many critics thrive on, as something has to be at the butt of the joke.
I’m guilty of being a critic before, but there are enough jerks in the world that I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m far more interested in making things myself, or exploring what I think is awesome content that inspires me.
But why the uncanny?
Robots, if they are right between familiar and unfamiliar, find themselves in uncanny. Creepy.
I grew up scared of horror movies, roller coasters and loud noises. This tendency to be afraid allows me, as an adult, to still get a residual adrenaline rush from these things. But the uncanny, specifically, scares me more than anything, precisely because it relies on imagination. The monster in your mind is far scarier than the monster on the screen or drawn on the page. The uncanny lies between that which is familiar and unfamiliar, in a space that is blanketed in a murky fog. It makes you put together the pieces, and figure out if what you’re encountering is innocuous, or something far more sinister. This led to my graduate thesis on immersive media and the uncanny, which explored how a mysteriously interactive and immersive environment unsettled viewers.
So enjoy!