Uncanny Valley, BAC review – fascinating robotic lecture on aspects of the self

It’s the vulnerability of the robot that strikes you in this subtle, intelligent production from the German theatre group Rimini Protokoll.

From the Maschinenmensch in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to Roy Batty in Blade Runner, there’s no shortage of automatons providing their different takes on the human condition, yet few exude the sheer existential exhaustion of the narrator of Uncanny Valley.

The German author Thomas Melle agreed to have his animatronic double created for this show as part of an investigation of the elusive sense of self for someone who – like him – suffers from bipolar disorder. In the script – which he has co-written with Rimini Protokoll’s Stefan Kaegi – he juxtaposes two biographies; his own and Alan Turing’s. What ensues is an elegant examination of how what is artificial and programmed can be just as much a part of what it is to be human as what is supposedly authentic. It’s not a new argument, but it’s one that’s deftly executed, not least for managing not to mention Frankenstein.

When you enter the auditorium, the robot is sitting in darkness. As the lights slowly go up there’s a strange sense of birth as its hands reach out helplessly and its eyes seem to struggle to adjust to the light. The lightning speed developments in artificial intelligence mean that the definition of what a robot is are becoming ever more complex. Yet where the dominant impression is often of a mechanised efficiency that tilts towards the future, here the slightly mottled skin, the shadows under the eyes and the nuanced contours of the voice make you immediately want to contemplate this robot’s past. 

The set-up for the script is that we have come to listen to a lecture whose dissection of the difference between our "natural" selves and our artificial selves will look at everything from prosthetics to neuro-linguistic programming. Melle’s animatronic double – dressed conservatively in a crisp white shirt and dark jumper and trousers – is sat in a chair next to a table with an Apple laptop on it. Above him hangs a large screen onto which is projected, early on, a funny picture of Melle as a six-year-old schoolboy pulling a face at the camera. As we laugh, he remarks wrily that he cannot understand why he looked as if he was bored and annoyed since he adored school, adding that "maybe we are already actors of ourselves at the age of 6."

The show resonates in part because it is clearly no dry intellectual exercise for Melle. In contrast with his own challenges of living with bipolar disorder, the robot – he declares – embodies something “stable” about who he is. Throughout there’s a sense of Melle trying to pin down his identity by stepping outside his body. When he first sees the model of his head, created by embalming him in a silicone cast, he describes it as looking like “Roman sculpture; it historicises something of me.” With the publication of his first book “I had extracted something from within to be able to look at it from without”.

Alan Turing’s test, famously derived from the imitation game, looked at whether a machine could make itself indistinguishable from a human in conversation. Melle spends some time looking at Turing’s experiments with machines, as well as at the cruel chemical treatment given to him to “reprogram” his sexuality. His musings are both philosophical and empathetic, though he often lightens the tone by flipping questions out to the audience.  Pointing out that Google’s reCAPTCHA is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart”, he asks to general laughter: “How are you so certain you can check the box ‘I am not a robot’?”

The concept of the Uncanny Valley was developed by robotics professor Masahiro Mori in 1970, to express the uneasiness and revulsion that humans feel when looking at a robot whose appearance falls between being “somewhat human” and “fully human”. Here there is no doubt about the robotic status of our narrator (created by Chiscreatures Filmeffects GmbH). While the face is fleshy and lived in, the back of the head is left open so we can see the electrodes protruding (pictured above).

This is a fantastically executed theatrical experiment by the intelligently provocative Rimini Protokoll. Following the short run at the Battersea Arts Centre it will be appearing in Bonn and Dresden; hopefully, for anyone London-based who’s interested in genuinely inventive theatre it will make a return trip here before too long.

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