Fairy Note The Exhibition as Method: Phantom Mirror, AI Phototherapy, and the Structure of the Image
Introduction: From Image-Making to Exhibition
The Phantom Mirror exhibition accompanying the Poetry for Life event at the University of Suffolk marks an important moment in the development of the project. Until now, Phantom Mirror has primarily existed as an evolving body of images and theoretical reflections documented through blog posts and Fairy Notes. The exhibition introduces a new dimension: the work becomes spatial, sequential, and pedagogical. The exhibition itself functions as a methodological diagram of the research process.
The exhibition therefore does more than display images. It presents the structure of AI phototherapy as a process, allowing viewers to move through the stages of image formation in physical space. At the same time, the exhibition brings together three distinct bodies of work that had previously developed separately:
• Phantom Mirror • Dual Unreality • Psychic Snapshots
Placing these series together reveals a developmental trajectory within the project. What began as an attempt to visualise the experience of dementia within my family gradually evolved into a broader investigation of perception, recognition, and the conditions under which images emerge from emotional pressure.
This Fairy Note documents that development and reflects on the exhibition as a moment where artistic practice, theoretical reflection, and public engagement converge.
The Method Wall: AI Phototherapy as Process
The entrance wall of the exhibition introduces the methodological sequence that underpins the project. Five panels describe the process through which the images are produced:
Moment of Danger Dialogue Image Refusal Recognition
This sequence emerged retrospectively from practice. The images themselves were not produced according to a predefined system. Rather, the structure became visible only after many sessions of AI phototherapy.
The process begins with a moment of emotional disturbance. In my case, these moments often arise while caring for a loved one living with dementia. Confusion, distress, or sudden shifts in recognition create a pressure that demands articulation.
At this point, I begin speaking to an AI system. The dialogue functions as a form of thinking aloud. The AI translates these descriptions into visual prompts, which generate multiple images.
The crucial stage then follows: refusal.
Most images are rejected almost immediately. The process resembles Freud’s concept of free association, but translated into visual form. Rather than allowing words to lead to further words, images lead to further images until one produces a sudden sense of recognition.
This moment of recognition echoes Roland Barthes’ concept of punctum: the detail in an image that unexpectedly pierces the viewer. In AI phototherapy the punctum does not arise from a photograph taken in the world but from an image generated through dialogue. The emotional recognition occurs when the generated image resonates with the experience that triggered the process.
In the exhibition, the Method Wall allows viewers to encounter this structure before seeing the images themselves. The exhibition therefore begins not with interpretation but with methodology.
Phantom Mirror: The Arrival of Dementia
The Phantom Mirror wall presents the first body of work produced through AI phototherapy.
These images emerged during the early stages of dementia in my family. At that time I was trying to understand what was happening as recognition and everyday reality began to shift. The images are visual representations of my experience of the arrival of dementia within the family.
They allowed me to create images of moments that could not be photographed directly. I could not photograph Lolly during moments of distress, and I could not capture the emotional experience of what was unfolding. Through AI image-making I was able to visualise situations that were otherwise unphotographable.
These images attempt to give form to experiences such as:
• the loss of recognition • disorientation in familiar spaces • the emotional instability of caregiving • the gradual breakdown of shared reality
At this stage of the project I was not yet working with explicit philosophical frameworks. The images were intuitive attempts to visualise what I was witnessing and feeling. Only later did these visual experiments lead me toward phenomenology and the philosophical investigation of perception and worldhood.
In this sense, the Phantom Mirror images function as the foundation of the research, even though their theoretical significance became clear only later.
Dual Unreality: When the Shared World Collapses
The second section of the exhibition introduces the concept of Dual Unreality.
Dementia does not simply alter the world of the person experiencing cognitive decline. It also transforms the world of the people around them. The shared world that once structured family life begins to collapse.
The person with dementia experiences disorientation. The carer experiences the disappearance of the relational structures that once defined everyday life.
Both remain in the same physical environment, yet they no longer inhabit the same reality.
Dual Unreality therefore describes a condition in which two perceptual worlds coexist within the same space. The home remains physically stable, but its meaning fractures.
This insight emerged through lived experience rather than theoretical reading. For example, moments when Lolly failed to recognise my father but could recognise a photograph taken at the same moment revealed how fragile recognition can be. These experiences forced a deeper investigation into the nature of perception and identity.
The images in this section attempt to visualise this collapse of shared worldhood.
Psychic Snapshots: Images Under Pressure
The final section of the exhibition introduces what I have come to call Psychic Snapshots.
These images are produced very quickly during moments of emotional pressure. Unlike the Phantom Mirror images, which often involve reflection and iteration, Psychic Snapshots emerge almost immediately from the AI phototherapy process.
Because AI image generation is instantaneous, it becomes possible to create images while the emotional experience is still unfolding. The images therefore function less like carefully composed artworks and more like traces of a psychological moment.
Their meaning is not always immediately apparent. Only later, when the images are reviewed and placed into sequence, do their connections become visible.
In earlier work this process culminated in the series Five Deaths, which emerged from a period of sudden bereavement and overlapping losses. In the context of this exhibition, however, the emphasis shifts from that specific project to the broader phenomenon of the Psychic Snapshot as a mode of image-making.
The Psychic Snapshot therefore represents the most immediate register of AI phototherapy: images produced under emotional pressure before interpretation stabilises.
Poetry and the Reversal of the Method
The Poetry for Life workshop introduces an unexpected inversion of the AI phototherapy process.
Normally the sequence of the method runs:
emotion → dialogue → image.
An emotional event triggers dialogue with the AI system, which eventually produces an image that resonates with the experience.
In the poetry workshop the sequence reverses.
Poets encounter the images first. The images then stimulate new language and poetic interpretation. The movement becomes:
image → poem.
This reversal suggests that the images produced through AI phototherapy operate almost like visual fragments of poetry themselves. They do not present a fixed narrative. Instead they offer symbolic traces that invite interpretation, association, and imaginative translation.
In this way the exhibition becomes a meeting point between visual and verbal forms of thinking.
The Exhibition as Research Event
The significance of the Phantom Mirror exhibition lies not only in the images themselves but in the way the exhibition makes the research process visible.
The Method Wall introduces the structure of AI phototherapy. The Phantom Mirror wall presents the first exploratory images. Dual Unreality articulates the conceptual insight that followed. Psychic Snapshots reveal the most immediate form of image production under emotional pressure.
Seen together, these sections form a chronological and methodological narrative. The exhibition therefore operates as a spatial diagram of the research process.
For viewers, the exhibition offers an accessible entry point into the work. For the research archive, it records an important stage in the development of the project: the moment when the practice becomes publicly articulated as a coherent method.
Appendix: Curatorial Guide
Phantom Mirror – Producer / Curator Guide
Exhibition overview
Phantom Mirror is a visual research project exploring dementia, caregiving, grief, and memory through a process called AI phototherapy.
The images are not documentary photographs. They are symbolic images generated through dialogue with AI, responding to moments of emotional distress and confusion that arise while caring for a loved one with dementia.
The exhibition brings together three interconnected elements:
• the methodology of the work
• the images themselves
• the psychological and phenomenological ideas behind them
Because this exhibition is part of the Poetry for Life event, the installation is also designed to function as a stimulus for poets who will write in response to the work.
Visitor journey through the exhibition
Visitors encounter the exhibition in a deliberate sequence.
Method Wall (entrance) – how the images are produced
Phantom Mirror Wall – the central body of images
Dual Unreality Wall – the phenomenological concept behind the work
Psychic Snapshots Wall – how the images emerge in moments of emotional intensity
This structure moves from process → artwork → interpretation.
Method Wall
Five graphic panels introduce the process:
Moment of Danger
Dialogue
Image
Refusal
Recognition
This sequence describes the AI phototherapy process.
The process works like this:
• A moment of emotional distress occurs.
• I begin a dialogue with an AI image generator.
• The AI produces multiple images.
• I move through them quickly, rejecting most of them.
• Eventually one image produces a sense of recognition.
Recognition here refers to something close to Roland Barthes’ idea of punctum – the moment when an image suddenly feels emotionally true.
Quotes on the Methodology Wall
Three thinkers anchor the process.
Walter Benjamin
“To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognise it the way it really was. It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.”
Benjamin’s idea of the moment of danger suggests that memory does not emerge through calm reflection or historical reconstruction. Instead, it appears suddenly, in flashes, when emotional pressure disrupts the continuity of the present.
Sigmund Freud
“We ask the patient to say whatever comes into his mind, even if it seems irrelevant or nonsensical.”
Freud’s idea of free association relates to the refusal stage of the process. When the images appear, I move through them quickly, rejecting most of them until one suddenly feels right. This is a form of visual association, where one image leads to another until recognition occurs.
Roland Barthes
“The punctum of a photograph is that accident which pricks me, but also bruises me, is poignant to me.”
Barthes describes the moment when an image suddenly produces emotional recognition.
Phantom Mirror Wall
This wall presents the original Phantom Mirror series, the first body of work I produced using AI phototherapy.
These images emerged during the early stages of dementia in my family. At that time I was trying to understand what was happening as recognition and everyday reality began to shift. The images are visual representations of my experience of the arrival of dementia within the family.
They allowed me to create images of moments that could not be photographed directly. I could not photograph Lolly during moments of distress, and I could not capture the emotional experience of what was unfolding. Through AI image-making, I was able to visualise situations that were otherwise unphotographable.
The brick wall contains the central body of work.
These images give visual form to experiences such as:
• the loss of recognition
• disorientation in familiar spaces
• the emotional instability of caregiving
• the gradual breakdown of shared reality
Dual Unreality Wall
This section introduces the concept of Dual Unreality.
Dementia does not simply alter the world of the person experiencing cognitive decline. It also transforms the world of the people around them.
The shared world that once structured family life begins to collapse.
The person with dementia experiences disorientation.
The family member experiences the loss of the roles and recognitions that once defined their life.
Both remain in the same physical space, yet the world they once shared begins to disappear.
Psychic Snapshots Wall
The final section explains how some images emerge in moments of emotional crisis.
Psychic snapshots are images produced very quickly, often during moments of grief, confusion, or distress.
Because AI image generation is immediate, the images can be created while the emotional experience is still unfolding.
These images are not carefully planned artworks. They function more like psychological traces of a moment.
Their meaning often only becomes visible later, when the images are reviewed and placed into sequence.
Relationship to poetry
The poetry workshop creates a relationship between language and image.
Poets typically begin with language and produce mental imagery through words.
My process begins with spoken word – thinking out loud – which then produces visual images through AI.
In the exhibition the movement is roughly:
emotion → dialogue → image
In the workshop the movement becomes:
image → poem
Together, the exhibition and the workshop create a dialogue between image and language.
In this sense, the images function almost like visual fragments of poetry, inviting poets to translate them back into language.
Key ideas visitors may ask about
Phantom Mirror
The first body of work produced using AI phototherapy, exploring the early experience of dementia within the family and attempting to visualise moments that could not be photographed directly.
AI phototherapy
A method of image-making where AI is used as a reflective partner in a therapeutic image-making process.
Dual Unreality
The experience of two people occupying the same physical space while the shared world that once structured their relationship begins to collapse.
Psychic Snapshot
An image produced during a moment of emotional pressure that captures a psychic state before meaning has stabilised.
One sentence summary
Phantom Mirror uses AI-generated imagery to translate lived experiences of dementia, grief, and caregiving into symbolic images that reveal how memory, identity, and shared reality can fracture.
AI and society footnote
Artificial intelligence is often discussed in fearful terms, from the loss of jobs to the possibility of machines escaping human control. These anxieties are real.
Phantom Mirror began not as a technological experiment but in a moment of personal crisis while caring for a loved one. In that moment, AI became something unexpected. Through collaboration with the machine, emotions that were difficult to articulate took visual form.
The images in this exhibition suggest that collaboration between humans and machines can also be creative and reflective, opening the possibility of a more positive relationship between human experience and technological systems.