Adobe Museum of Digital Media

Oursler's "Valley," the inaugural exhibition in the Adobe Museum of Virtual Media, relates to the history and current practices and activities in the vast linking network of the internet. In this virtual installation the internet is presented as a physical flowchart, which would use 3D dynamic rendering to facilitate user interactivity. The flowchart is a whimsical Rube Goldberg-like virtual construction, divided into 17 interlinking zones of activity. The flowchart installation is augmented by a curatorial guide, both comic and existential, performed by Tom Eccles, that who appears unexpectedly to comment and pontificate on the meanings and possibilities of the internet.

The “Uncanny Valley” seems like a perfect starting point for this project; simply put Masahiro Mori’s theory states that the closer machines come to mimicking the human form, the more disturbing they become to humans. This work would extend that theory to explore psychological aspects of the “Uncanny Valley” moving beyond the likeness and characteristics of robotics to posit that the internet itself is a epistemological mirror of human consciousness. Thus, the internet user is already deeply involved in aspects of the “Uncanny Valley.” This work gives us a chance to explore where we are today in relation to technology and human desire. 

This online exhibition opens on October 6th, 2010. 

Read more about the Inaugural Exhibition at the Adobe Museum of Digital Media. 

AMDM: Valley