According to Freud, the uncanny (Unheimliche) is what is strange whilst feeling strangely familiar to our psyche – a familiar thing or event is encountered in an unsettling context.

It’s something located in a concealed dimension to which we didn’t know we belonged and it draws us to itself, making us step outside the subconscious that we used to know. It’s the eye of a stranger mirroring its ambiguous opposite – heimliche: what is familiar and agreeable, but also what must be kept out of sight.

The uncanny valley recalls the same concept: there is a gray zone between a human shape and our empathic reaction.   

I believe that the artistic process’ uncanny is the awe to the unexpected. It’s the limbo in which we lapse just by looking at a face or a landscape, a condition that’ll affect us until we embrace it.