MIRROR 404


Our oldest technology for self-perception the mirror, is invisible to our newest, the computer.
For millennia, mirrors have been how we see ourselves and understand how others see us. They are poetic objects; surfaces that reveal a perception of who we are.


But machine vision cannot process mirrors or reflections, computers weren't designed to perceive themselves.


Contemporary life is increasingly experienced through computer-vision. Our phones, security systems, and cars all "perceive" for us. Machine vision serves as our sight while making us its subject, yet it remains blind to reflection.







This project engages directly with that limitation. Over two years, I scanned fifty mirrors in natural environments using 3D reconstruction software. In these new works, shown as interactive pointclouds, we can move dynamically through and around the world, as understood by computer vision.
As we do so, we notice the foliage and landscape reconstruct accurately, but the mirrors don’t. Algorithms treat reflected light as physical space – stretching it into three dimensions, creating depth that doesn't exist.









This technical limitation perfectly symbolises a wider truth.

The mirror becomes a reminder of what artificial vision cannot grasp: our capacity to see ourselves. Some forms of seeing, it seems, remain ours alone.