Mirror, mirror on the wall

Self Identity is a human trait I would like to explore in this blog post. Our self-identity encompasses our understanding of ourselves, including our personality, values, beliefs, and life experiences. It is a critical aspect of our existence, shaping how we interact with others, the decisions we make, and how we see ourselves in the world. In the context of self-identity, a mirror is a particularly interesting object. A mirror projects our entity that others see, and it's an explicated form of ourselves. Gordon G. Gallup, the psychologist who developed the mirror self-recognition test, explains ‘‘The unique feature of mirror-image stimulation is that the identity of the observer and his reflection in a mirror are necessarily one and the same”. In other words, our identity is tied to our self-awareness, and when we look at a mirror, it is a necessity to match our identity with the one that we see in the mirror. 

But what if it is not the same? What if what we see in the mirror is not exactly us? Such a dissonant experience might give rise to some existential questions on the concept of our self-identity. Some would even say it rightfully landed in the uncanny valley of ambiguity. This is nicely exhibited by the work of Mario Klingemann, the uncanny mirror. The interactive installation generates digital portraits of viewers in real-time, utilizing artificial intelligence to scrutinize biometric face markers, poses, and hand movements. Subsequently, it presents a painterly representation based on all the data it has gathered before, demonstrating how the machine perceives its observer. The machine's accumulated knowledge informs each new portrait it produces, and every face it generates retains a trace of those who previously looked into it. While interacting with the Uncanny Mirror, people often report feeling a sense of unease as they watch the robot reproduce its own facial expressions. This discomfort can prompt people to question their own sense of identity, and even to wonder if the artificial creature projected in the mirror is a reflection of themselves.