90%Mohammed Abdurazak
- written work
Mori begs to differ. He likens the quest of robotics to hiking - every onward step in the climber’s ascent of a mountain represents an additional foothold in the creation of the optimal humanoid, and therefore a proportional rise in our empathy for the machine. It must be noted, however, that despite the popular notion that each step takes the climber higher, their true altitude would remain the same (or perhaps even diminish) as they trudge toward the summit - owing to the interventions of valleys.
The valley - a purgatoric, transitional stretch providing neither a stairway to the top nor safe passage to base camp. A winding limbo-land to make hikers question whether a fleeting glance from the peak is worth the litres of wasted sweat and lactic acid. Worth your feet, blistered and oedemic from days of meandering.
The mission of robotics, according to Mori, is also halted (if only temporarily) by a valley - the “uncanny valley”. At a percentage of likeness quantified at 80-90% human, the expected hope of progress is marred by a sudden onset of dread and revulsion felt when encountered by something almost, yet critically not quite, like oneself.
An icy sheet shrouds you upon shaking “hands” with this form - a grip imperceptibly too tight, glazed eyes refusing to break contact; a smile that ekes beyond the confines of polite acknowledgment - baring a maw embedded with teeth that just don’t connect like yours do. The self and its idea of sentience are sacred; we’re hardwired to feel violated when any being
trespasses into it.
The uncanny valley, then, calls into question the ethics of robotics. How far can technology’s leash be stretched until its intrusion on the human condition is deemed too severe? This discussion is, of course, fraught with technicalities, evergreen and perpetual. It’s simply inconceivable that a single consensus would be reached regarding a quandary as complex as whether or not a program should be able to consume the electricity required by a small country to be able to spit out an image of a cow with five tits. What is more fruitful, I believe is asking its converse:
If the march toward sentience is indeed unrelenting and unavoidable - if the birth of the immaculate titanium man - complete with self-enforced intellect and emotion and granted a corporeal form - is nigh, how would he feel about the uncanny valley?
He is born, through no fault of his own, with the curse of difference. His actions immaterial, wit secondary, productivity discarded. His primary identity is doomed to be that of the “other.” He’s treated to grimaces as he walks by - the dirty eyes of curiosity that often trail uniqueness. They tug their children closer, giving them brisk overhead strikes to keep them quiet, hastily making way lest “something” happen. The children are beings of grace: their recognition of his peculiarity isn’t laced with unease. What would the children lose by learning about him?
He cannot mask the tightness, the godforsaken rigidity that plagues his body. He cannot feign the fluidity of their gaits, the comfort in the way they shuffle around, shifting through speeds at will. Loosening up is a Sisyphean task, and his position as the street’s chosen subject of scrutiny doesn’t help. He’s told that he’s brave simply for existing in a world not made for him, but what
good is a pat on the back when all it does is throw him off balance?
Each new day is a series of humiliations, reminders of inadequacy. Until the day his body is forced into obsolescence, unable to host what made him tick. He will be condemned to the scrapyard, having lived a crippled life where try as he may, despite the years of apparent betterment, he was never quite able to transition into a “real” man.
How would he feel about the uncanny valley? Ask a disabled person.
***
Landscape Fields c.1910 Jamini Roy, Indian, 1887-1972, Tempera on board, H. 21 cm, W. 27cm; H. 33.5 cm, W. 39.5 cm, Modern & Contemporary Art, MAC.00799
***
I was born with Cerebral Palsy, which means that my first journey (the Great Womb Exodus) really set the tone for all the other trips I would go on to make - risky, out-of-breath, and in Koramangala. I spent my first few days in the ICU, which my grandmother, in her all her cheery disposition, calls my “layover before death.” Perhaps it's the looming phantasm of my infantile fling with death that caused my parents to spiral into a routine of manipulative possessiveness, or maybe they were doomed from the start. Either way, luck wasn’t on my side, because “just because I almost died back then due to freak medical complications doesn’t mean that I will die during my friend’s INDOOR Halloween party” would be a solid (and frankly, non-dismissable) argument under any other circumstance.
The certificate was bestowed upon me by Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital after a thoroughly invasive inspection that involved me being stripped down to my boxers. Bangalore’s oldest hospital and it played the part well. The faint odour of asbestos wafted through its chipped yellow walls. Moss spurted through cracks in its mosaic tiles, like a rushed piece of graffiti. Finding myself in a deserted corridor, I now realise that I’d been in uncanny valley gold - the perfect liminal space, rife with disrepair and abandon. Once teeming with the trots of determined nurses and racking coughs. I could envision jaded men on the decaying chairs, hawking spit and folding newspapers, all lost to the rough transition to the modern.
My certificate proudly boasts of my 50% disability, but that’s never how I measured myself. Instead, I used my father’s words of encouragement. Appa had an independence scale, expressed in percentages. Every time he needed to make sure I understood that a decision of his was definitely not due to my disability, he’d bump up the numbers on the independence scale.
Here’s a quick illustration:
“Beta, you’re 50% independent. You’re doing so well. Doesn't mean it's safe for you to take the school bus like all the other kids. Once you’re more comfortable on uneven surfaces, you’ll get to ride. I promise.”
“Beta, you’re 75% independent. But what if something happens at this indoor party that you are not able to handle like the others?”
“Beta, you’re 90% independent. But college is a scary place and I have to protect you from your own stupidities and weaknesses.”
The chokehold only tightens. How could you be a real man to the whole world when your blood refuses to see it? You learn that the trail to 100% is not only unattainable, it is non-existent. You were never meant to climb. It was always pointless. Humanness was never a journey - It is an arbitrary gift. Either you have it or you don’t, and it was never granted to me. 88, 89, 90. Your legs are too skinny to take you further.
And yet you crawl toward the zenith, the very top of the world. Lungs shot, nails chipped, every breath like razors nicking your windpipe, hoping that the higher you get, the more real you become. And you thought you were almost there. But maybe you were always damned to the valley, forced to skulk by the gates of the transit that leads to humanity
This uncharacteristically dire essay speaks of my fight to experience the human condition in all its glory, and (mostly) the perils that come along with it. I attempt to lay bare the common perception of my body as the “other,” a tabooed agent of discomfort, by likening societal attitudes towards disability to the concept of the “uncanny valley,” which seeks to explain one’s antipathy to forms not-quite-yet human.
Attempting to rebuke the burden of “inspiration porn” that is often placed upon the already-hurting backs of the disabled, it tackles the spectres of futility that often overpower the desire to persist in a world where my community's existence is restricted to the lower rungs of life.
MAP’s mission is to democratise art, making it as fun and relatable to everyone as possible! We hope to change the perception of museums and art by making our museum a melting pot of ideas, stories and cultural exchange.
Crafted as part of the MAP’s youth engagement initiatives, Pulse serves as a platform for young voices. An independent space for young adults to share their creative work and practice.