Through a glass darkly: reflections on the affectivity of mirrored composition.

This body of work is the culmination of a part-time five year investigation into the use of mirroring in digital art composition and its potential to generate affective intensity. The research has occurred through a series of installative works and artefacts produced with digital media in which mirrored operations have been employed in a variety of different ways. The aim of these explorations was to develop and articulate a compositional approach based in acts of mirroring, with the aim of extending affective invitations to the viewer. The process drew from fields across myth and cultural production, cognitive development, design theory and cultural history. The investigation served to articulate the latent flux inferred in mirroring which is fundamental to all transformative processes. It explored mirroring through two categories of inquiry: looks like me – but not me. (doppelgangeresque renarration of mirroring), and not like me but is me. (mimetic renarration of mirroring). The former research inquiry, ‘looks like me – but not me’, interrogated this relationship within the context of the “mirror phase”, a profound moment in subjective development whereby the infant recognises and integrates the reflected self with their physical sense of identity, while introducing an implicated separation between the physical awareness of self and the represented image within that boundary-formation. It was within the context of that implication that a series of compositional principles were identified to renarrate relational antecedents within the work. With regard to the latter inquiry, ‘not like me – but is me’, the research explored mirroring by framing the projects within the context of Caillois’ mimetic crisis. The purpose of this Masters research was to resolve dissatisfaction I had experienced in previous encounters with digitally mediated art. I sought to identify what was absent in that experience for me, and then find ways to resolve the situation within my practice. This thesis hopes to demonstrate how the research process has been able to identify affective mirrored operations and has tested those principals in an informed way throughout the work