Submirror - Self-perception, loss of control, and digital puppetry

"In Recurrent Waiting, the mirror replicates the viewer's image, but the reflection blinks erratically, accompanied by faint signalling sounds. This blinking follows a timed sequence that transmits Lucky's monologue from Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot in Morse code. The result is a fragmented, involuntary form of communication-technically generated by the viewer's presence, yet entirely outside their conscious intent. The experience is uncanny: your reflection blinks compulsively, as if trying to convey something urgent from behind the glass."

"Drawing on Beckett's themes of absurdity and existential dislocation, the work transforms the mirror into a stage where the viewer becomes both puppet and performer, animated by a script they neither authored nor control. As with other pieces in the Submirror series, "Recurrent Waiting" questions the stability of self-image under automated observation. It asks what happens when technology doesn't just observe us-but represents us, poorly, poetically, and without consent."

"In Recurrent Kafka, the mirror replicates the viewer's image, but the reflected image-the virtual subject-gazes relentlessly at a teleprompter text that scrolls across the mirror and displays the collected works of Franz Kafka. The piece uses AI to create a live "rigged" clone of the viewer, controlling the direction of the eyes, the pose of the head, and the speed of movement. The viewer is disoriented -at once, reading Kafka's writings while also watching their own face fixed on the ceaseless flow of words."

Submirror is a series by Atelier Lozano-Hemmer that probes self-perception, loss of control, and digital puppetry through recalcitrant mirrors that intentionally alter reflections. Recurrent Waiting makes reflections blink erratically, encoding Lucky's monologue from Waiting for Godot in Morse code and producing involuntary, fragmented communication triggered by the viewer's presence. The mirrors transform viewers into puppets and performers animated by scripts they neither authored nor control. Recurrent Kafka uses AI to create a live rigged clone that fixes gaze on scrolling Kafka texts, disorienting viewers by merging their image with continuous literary display. The piece debunks stable self-image under automated observation and will show at Untitled Art Houston, Bitforms gallery Booth B47.

Read at CreativeApplications.Net