Steve Rowell
Uncanny Sensing, Remote Valleys
2013-2020
Uncanny Sensing, Remote Valleys is a project aimed at investigating ecology and post-natural landscapes. It is about the rise of the machine in the age of the Anthropocene and how we understand, perceive, and experience the environment using technology – giving us a view of a life-supporting Earth that is incomplete, synthetic, strange, and uncanny.
![Nonhuman photograph captured by motion sensor trail cam of a female wolf in the Fort McCoy Barrens State Natural Area, Wisconsin.](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9acdee070f4b041bf430509161f32cd99d141446e72663481b3ad0c5c781c2f1/wolf-deer-head-colorhalftone-3k.jpg)
The title of the project is a reconfiguration of the terms:
Remote sensing
A method of data collection from the physical world via sensors and other remote technology
+
Uncanny valley
The cognitive dissonance caused by lifelike replicas of living things. First discovered by robotics professor Masahiro Mori in 1970, The uncanny valley is defined as a level of realism in which the human observer has a negative reaction. Any less realistic and we feel empathy; any more realistic and we can't distinguish that it's artificial. the valley in between produces repulsion, disgust, fear, etc.
- Do we experience the uncanny valley when encountering nonhumans, those of flesh and blood or built in a lab?
- Do other beings, sentient or not, experience the uncanny valley when encountering us?
- Have we become undead to them?
- Do they recognize our ruins and human-made devices when they encounter them in "nature"?
Premiere exhibition:
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art
University of Oregon
January 23 to March 28, 2021
Virtual version of the exhibition
Video: In Conversation with Steve Rowell and Emily Scott
![A river in the Mark Twin National Forest in the Missouri Ozarks has been turned into a flowing waste stream of effluent from a zinc and lead mine. Production still from Uncanny Sensing, Remote Valleys, Steve Rowell, 2020, © 2020 Steve Rowell.](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/21e016105e0d02f62b96d0417c618a2984aac1c79dbb27658b4251335083cdb7/uncanny-sensing-zinc-effluent-1-900.jpg)
![Teflon tubes and glass sampling funnels inhale air to collect samples of toxins and particulate matter at one of hundreds of atmosphere monitoring sites across Houston, Texas. Production still from: Uncanny Sensing, Remote Valleys, Steve Rowell, 2020, © 2020 Steve Rowell.](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/69d0dc9e103781d6b506a6f7a902107dea8e682dfad01bdb15dd73dcc4f5c05f/20140130_130707_Rowell_Y_900.jpg)
![Premiere, Jordan Schnitzer Museum, University of Oregon, January-March 2021](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/550393a00635735aba2bf3c1ac81e926403e938a46e8d23a58b4810ca51c7d28/UncannySensing_20210329_0035_hr.jpg)
![Premiere, Jordan Schnitzer Museum, University of Oregon, January-March 2021](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/8308647be43bee619c6f70b1eec664af81a8ce252d428d1624abcd76a9b93f2a/UncannySensing_20210329_0001_hr.jpg)
![Premiere, Jordan Schnitzer Museum, University of Oregon, January-March 2021](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/98c4e3b146a2606019c0640c2f3bff59e88c02784b0563dc587b3cace5f4a82c/UncannySensing_20210329_0050_hr.jpg)
![Premiere, Jordan Schnitzer Museum, University of Oregon, January-March 2021](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/91542d0618230fbd146d5f6ca1a69fe1c09c20fbf7e34f3934518cfc8251c9e0/UncannySensing_20210329_0011_hr.jpg)
![Premiere, Jordan Schnitzer Museum, University of Oregon, January-March 2021](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3f4afd71ac318b24d14beae62864ff8a37459b6119d0602245510d9ce5cdbcbc/UncannySensing_20210329_0057_hr.jpg)
![Premiere, Jordan Schnitzer Museum, University of Oregon, January-March 2021](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a81462a449aa7c4c41cac4b89bc556363ac28574a501024081f1dbc80c957599/UncannySensing_20210329_0044_hr.jpg)
![Premiere of the regional exhibition: Uncanny Sensing, INOVA, Milwaukee, June-August 2013.](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fdc194cd303eae34465e029c92424b1dd3098581dd6c1dd368514e8f882374cc/20130701_134724.jpg)
![A howl box, outfitted with parabolic microphones, waterproof speakers, and recording/playback equipment, used to monitor wolf migration in the forests of north Wisconsin.](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/374b216df9f236d08b32e81062c513b6106a449f52adef67887ee2b47d846128/20130701_134255.jpg)
Uncanny Sensing, Remote Valleys is supported with funding from a 2013 Creative Capital award, and 2014 Mitchell Center for the Arts commission, and a 2019 Guggenheim Foundation fellowship.
November 2020 interview at Creative Capital.
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e8375a9501b4af8ab89cb05c178279945fb5aef3df29f29954881c95c9ce5fbe/cc-stacked-round-dash-black-300x168.png)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/186a16f27e05d6b5e74e1a33f7b2a2d7bf1822519b36367675438505ddd16772/guggenheim-foundation-logo.png)