Project KARA: Quantic Dream

Kara, a disturbing short film about a self-aware robot, was made by games studio Quantic Dream to demonstrate the "expressive power" of the PS3’s graphics. In order to sidestep the limitations of animating human characters (the so-called, contentious "uncanny valley"), the creators made a story about a newborn, intelligent robot -- a character that is supposed to be subtly unconvincing in its humanity.

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As interesting as this is as a technology demo, I think its real value is in the questions raised by the story and the storytelling choices. The unsettling poignancy of this clip arises from the gender and form of the robot. It would be interesting to re-render this with the "robot" as a kind of arachnoid assembly-line robot with a gender-neutral voice and see what happens to the film’s affect.