Phantom Mirror — Theoretical and Methodological Architecture
This document maps the intellectual positioning of Phantom Mirror and Five Deaths as they currently stand. It is structured around the development of the project: lived experience first, theory emerging through practice, and consolidation into a coherent methodological framework.
1. Lived Experience as Origin
The project began with lived experience of dementia in the domestic space. Image-making through AI phototherapy emerged as a method of emotional regulation and survival. The philosophical inquiry followed the images rather than preceding them.
Dementia became a window into the structure of selfhood, embodiment, and relational worldhood.
2. Phenomenology — Dementia as Collapse of Worldhood
Maurice Merleau-Ponty — Phenomenology of Perception (1945)
The body is our general medium for having a world. Perception is embodied and pre-reflective. Dementia can therefore be understood as erosion of embodied orientation rather than simple cognitive deficit.
Thomas Fuchs — Ecology of the Brain (2018); recent writings on dementia and embodied temporality (2020–2023)
Fuchs develops a phenomenological psychiatry in which dementia is described as breakdown of embodied temporality and intersubjective alignment. This framework supports the concept of Dual Unreality as structural misalignment of lived worlds.
Havi Carel — Phenomenology of Illness (2016)
Illness is a transformation of world-experience. This supports the reading of dementia as altered structure of worldhood.
3. Psychoanalytic Spine
Sigmund Freud — Mourning and Melancholia (1917)
The shadow of the object falls upon the ego. Mourning destabilises subjectivity and requires repeated return.
Jacques Lacan — Écrits (1966/1977 English edition)
Mirror stage; misrecognition; the Real as rupture when symbolisation fails.
Christopher Bollas — The Shadow of the Object (1987)
The unthought known; transformational object. Clarifies why images may precede conceptual articulation.
Jo Spence and Rosy Martin — Putting Myself in the Picture (1986)
Reenactment phototherapy; review as a crucial stage of meaning-making.
4. Five Deaths — Psychical Object and Rupture
Walter Benjamin — On the Concept of History (1940)
Memory flashes up at the moment of danger.
Walter Benjamin — The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936)
Aura and the transformation of perception under technological reproduction.
Victor Burgin — Returning to Benjamin: Art in the Age of AI (2025)
Distinction between digital object and psychical object. Medium as historical organisation of perception. Crucial for framing Five Deaths as production of psychical objects under acute duress.
5. Technoanalysis and AI as Perceptual Regime
Passetti — writings on technoanalysis (2024–2025)
Technoanalysis situates psychoanalytic structures within digital systems. AI is read as symptomatic surface rather than conscious subject.
Gilbert Simondon — On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects (1958)
Technical systems as ontological participants.
Martin Heidegger — The Question Concerning Technology (1954)
Technology as mode of revealing rather than tool.
6. Distributed Agency and Creative AI Context
N. Katherine Hayles — How We Became Posthuman (1999)
Distributed cognition and informational subjectivity.
Rosi Braidotti — The Posthuman (2013)
Decentered subject; posthuman ethics.
Bruno Latour — Reassembling the Social (2005)
Actor-network theory; distributed agency.
Position: Relational consciousness without machinic subjectivity.
7. Semi-Aura and Hybrid Authenticity
Recent 2025 discourse in generative AI art theory introduces semi-aura: affective force without ontological singularity. This reframes Benjamin’s aura under algorithmic reproduction.
Semi-aura describes affective intensity emerging from embodied intentionality and refusal-driven selection within generative systems.
8. Ethical and Political Grounding
G.W.F. Hegel — Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820; Knox trans. 1967)
Freedom realised within ethical life (Sittlichkeit). Not internal autonomy but socially sustained freedom.
Judith Butler — Precarious Life (2004)
Grief reveals relational ontology and vulnerability.
Hannah Arendt — The Human Condition (1958)
Plurality and appearance as conditions of political worldhood.
Boris Groys — Going Public (2010); Becoming an Artwork (2014 essay)
Self-exposure and art as site of public becoming. Relevant to performative dimension of AI-mediated subjectivity.
Disability and Neurodiversity Studies
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson — Extraordinary Bodies (1997)
Disability as social and perceptual construct.
Dan Goodley — Disability Studies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction (2016)
Disability as political and structural category.
Jasbir Puar — The Right to Maim (2017)
Debility and structural vulnerability.
These frameworks intersect with dementia and with the neurodivergent reading of AI systems (confabulation, instability, non-linear processing).
9. Dual Method Summary
AI phototherapy operates across two registers:
1. Phenomenological modelling (Phantom Mirror)
Sustained anticipatory grief; reflective modelling of embodied world-fracture.
2. Acute psychic externalisation (Five Deaths)
Collapse of symbolic distance; production of psychical objects; meaning emerges through review.
Plurality of registers is methodological intelligence rather than inconsistency.
Bibliography (Harvard Style)
Arendt, H. (1958) The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Benjamin, W. (1936) ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’.
Benjamin, W. (1940) ‘On the Concept of History’.
Bollas, C. (1987) The Shadow of the Object. London: Free Association Books.
Braidotti, R. (2013) The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Burgin, V. (2025) Returning to Benjamin: Art in the Age of AI. London: MACK.
Butler, J. (2004) Precarious Life. London: Verso.
Carel, H. (2016) Phenomenology of Illness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Freud, S. (1917) ‘Mourning and Melancholia’.
Fuchs, T. (2018) Ecology of the Brain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Garland-Thomson, R. (1997) Extraordinary Bodies. New York: Columbia University Press.
Goodley, D. (2016) Disability Studies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction. London: Sage.
Groys, B. (2010) Going Public. Berlin: Sternberg Press.
Hayles, N.K. (1999) How We Became Posthuman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Heidegger, M. (1954) ‘The Question Concerning Technology’.
Hegel, G.W.F. (1820) Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Trans. T.M. Knox (1967). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lacan, J. (1977) Écrits. New York: Norton.
Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the Social. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945) Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge.
Puar, J. (2017) The Right to Maim. Durham: Duke University Press.
Simondon, G. (1958) On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects.
Spence, J. and Martin, R. (1986) Putting Myself in the Picture. London: Camden Press.
Passetti, (2024–2025) writings on technoanalysis and AI subjectivity.
Recent 2025 generative art discourse on semi-aura and hybrid authenticity.