Kirsten Anderson has been the owner of Roq La Rue Gallery in Seattle, WA since 1998 – one of the pioneering galleries to pave the way for Pop Surrealism. In this essay, she reflects on the emergence simplified yet graphically bold images in art and makes her point about how important it is to design characters with an aura of empathy.
Brian Duffy is a researcher in the field of social humanoid machines. Here, he discusses the validity of the concept of the Uncanny Valley. Conceived in 1970 in the fields of robotics, it offers a model to explain human attraction and repulsion to machines and artificial life. It has been influential especially for humanoid robotics, but also animation film and its hyperreal aesthetics.
John Emigh is Professor Emeritus of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University, Providence, RI, USA. He also works as theatre director and performer. In this essay, he explains how every mask should be understood in its performative quality – and not as a mere artifact.
Woodrow Phoenix is a London-based comics artist, writer, editorial illustrator, graphic designer, font designer and author of children’s books. For Pictoplasma he remembers how the Designer Toy movement started off, and turned into a global art movement…
Thomas Macho, born 1952, is Professor of Cultural History at Humboldt University, Berlin, and conducts research in the areas of cultural history of time, animal studies and the history of death and mourning. For Pictoplasma, he takes a closer look at Cyclopses, women with three breasts and other monstrous Plini Races…
