Into the Mirror World

Stephen Haley, Research Fellow/lecturer School of Art, VCA

Emerging from an investigation of landscape painting, this research considers the mirror as a ‘meta-sign’ for contemporary Western culture. A comparatively recent technology, the planar glass mirror presented a pictorial space that was emulated in perspectival rendering, mechanized in photography, animated in cinema and is now further mimicked in 3D modeling programs. Additionally, the mechanisms of the mirror – symmetry, displacement, repetition, and simulation – can be metaphorically considered as underpinning many aspects of contemporary Western space and culture that are increasingly being based on 3D modeling programs.