Uncanny Valley Archives

Artist and animator Scott Gelber (b. 1983, Nyack, NY; lives in Brooklyn) uses stock 3-D models, rich digital textures, and artifacts of contemporary computing to construct elaborate tableaux that are both familiar and inexplicable. For Uncanny Valley Archives, Gelber continues his exploration of the Uncanny Valley, the theory that when artificial beings such as dolls, animated characters, or robots look or behave too much like human beings, they repulse viewers. In these works, Uncanny Valley doubles as the name of a notional, sentient town desperately trying to achieve perfection that has instead fallen sharply into catastrophe. Uncanny Valley Archives, commissioned for the Museum’s lobby, offers near-familiar moments and scenes that unravel to reveal the town’s horrifying reality.

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• Scott Gelber