Call of the Weird
By:
March 7, 2011
When you think telephone, you immediately think Venus of Willendorf, right? No? Then how about voodoo doll? Or ectoplasm?
![Venus_of_Willendorf_right](https://www.hilobrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Venus_of_Willendorf_right.jpg)
Seeking to “add an element of realism to long-distance communication by recreating the physical presence of a remote user,” Japanese professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, already well-known to HiLobrow tourists in the uncanny valley, adds an element of “seriously weird” with his mobile phone prototype, the Elfoid:
![hiroshi](https://www.hilobrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/hiroshi.jpg)
![phone](https://www.hilobrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/phone.jpg)
[The Elfoid]
![phone_pieces](https://www.hilobrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/phone_pieces.jpg)
It’s a little, rubbery, anatomically inferential . . . talking stick. I’m not sure that’s exactly the kind of physical presence that we want recreated in something we’re holding up to our face. Or, just holding at all.
[Just, stop]
Doesn’t it make you want to absolutely not touch it? But wait, there’s more: it’s eventually going to SQUIRM like its big brother, voice-activated and lightly constrained by its rigid support:
[The Telenoid R1]