Installation view of Tales of hoffmann (2020-2022), 90in x 72in x 25in, 3 minutes, single-channel digital video, LED screen, wood structure

Tales of hoffmann

When a human gazes upon a humanoid robot, there is a moment -- explains  Masahiro Mori -- that we see the fragility of our own mortal body and the inevitability of our own death. This is the “uncanny valley,” a concept coined by Mori in 1970 to explain the strange, unsettling feeling we get when looking at inanimate objects that look too human. Mori references Ernst Jentsch’s essay “On the psychology of the uncanny” (1906) and Sigmund Freud’s essay “The uncanny” (1919), both of which explore the unheimlich -- or the deep-unseated uneasiness within an unfamiliar context.

Both Jentsch and Freud found inspiration in the short story “Der Sandmann” (trans. “The Sandman”), written by E.T.A. Hoffmann in 1815. In the story, a young boy is scolded by a mysterious man, who says that the sandman comes at night to steal the eyes of naughty children while they sleep. Years later, the boy falls in love with a woman who has strange eyes and a magical voice; she turns out to be an automaton whose creator resembles the mysterious man from his youth. Fearing that the sandman has found him, the boy takes his own life.

Olympia is the name of the automaton in the “Der Sandmann,” as well as in the opera, “The Tales of Hoffmann,” written by Jacques Offenbach and Jules Barbier in 1880. Olympia performs her signature aria “Les oiseaux dans la charmille” (trans. “The birds in the arbour”) surrounded by an admiring audience who are unaware that she is not human.

Tales of hoffmann (2021-2022) is a three minute, single-channel video that uses deep-fake technology to merge a miming performance by the artist with a photograph of a ceramic doll in order to sync to three different recordings of Roberta Peters’ performances at the MET in New York in 1956.