![]() A market was born, and so entered thousands of visual con artists who manipulated photographic processes to give the believers the proof that they had longed for. It was the very revolutionary newness of the form which encouraged the spiritually minded to imagine the possibilities of recording events which until that point had remained un-recordable. The development of early photography in the 19th century was not so much hijacked by, but indelibly linked with the rise of spiritualism. The relationship between new technologies and the resurgence of irrational belief is well documented. A corpse creates feelings of the uncanny as it is life-like (for it was once alive), and reminds the viewer of his or her own approaching death, the animate imagining the inanimate, and the possibility that the inanimate could be animated again. The simplest and most universal example of this is the reanimation of the dead ghosts, zombies, poltergeist activity and communication from the ‘other side’ all form part of the psychology of the relationship that the living have towards the dead, and towards their own death. However, a base characteristic of the uncanny as argued by both Freud and Jentsch is that it occurs when animate and inanimate objects become confused, when objects behave in a way which imitate life, and thus blur the cultural, psychological and material boundaries between life and death, leading to what Jentsch called ‘Intellectual Uncertainty’- that things appear not to be what they are, and as such our reasoning may need re-structuring to make sense of the phenomenon. ![]() There are many readings and interpretations of the term, but many centre upon the concept of the animation of apparently inanimate objects, and can be applied to technologies including the animated image, the dislocated and disembodied voice when using a mobile phone, and the ‘uncanny valley’ of cybernetic automata. The ‘uncanny’ derives from the German unheimlich, loosely seen as meaning ‘un homely’. Caligari, Rutherford’s discovery of the proton, the first episode of the constantly re-animated ‘Itchy and Scratchy’(according to the internal history of ‘The Simpsons’) and the Theremin invented by its namesake, making it a good year all round. 1919 also saw the release of The Cabinet of Dr. Modern concepts of the uncanny can be traced back to two major essays: Wilhelm Jentsch’s, ‘On the Psychology of the Uncanny’ (1906), and Freud’s ‘The Uncanny’ (1919). “The uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar”
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