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.