Recursive Mirror App

After the first loops, I wanted to see what happens if recursion could run as a system of its own. Instead of manually feeding images back, I needed a way to let the process unfold in real time, an endless tunnel of reflections.

Building the App

I used Google Studio’s Build feature to put together a small app. It’s a drag-and-drop environment, so it didn’t need coding, just connecting blocks into a pipeline.

The setup works like this:

• A live camera captures the portrait.

• The image goes through Google Flash 2.5 (nano banana) for the first transformation, a subtle re-imagining like looking into a slightly warped mirror.

• From there, the output is passed into Imagen 4, which handles the recursive loop, each new frame generated from the last.

• After several cycles, the app displays the full chain: a sequence that drifts further from the original with every step.

First Runs

The first cycles stayed recognisable: the image was still me, just softened, as if filtered through glass. But then the shifts accelerated. By the third or fourth loop, the portrait no longer looked exactly like me. By the fifth, it had become another face, different, yet carrying fragments of resemblance.

It was uncanny but not negative. Watching it felt like seeing the self dissolve into something fluid, a reminder that identity is not fixed but constantly re-forming.

How It Works

Alienation and Mutual Alienation When you stand before this system, it captures your image and gives it back changed. You are present in the picture, but also absent from it. Each cycle creates distance between the self you know and the self the AI produces. This is what I call mutual alienation: we cannot fully grasp how the AI works, and AI cannot understand what it means to feel human.

Step 1 – Capturing the Self The webcam takes a live portrait. This is the starting point, the raw material.

Step 2 – First Transformation The portrait is processed by Google Flash 2.5 (nano banana). It stays close to the source, but details shift, a first sign that the mirror does not return you exactly.

Step 3 – The Recursive Loop The output is then fed into Imagen 4 again and again. With each cycle the image drifts:

• The first still resembles you.

• The second grows hazier.

• The third fragments.

• The fourth mutates into new forms.

• By the fifth, only a spectral trace remains.

The effect is déjà vu stretched into motion, familiar, yet estranged.

Step 4 – Final Projection The last image resembles you, but it is no longer you. It is a memory of a memory, an echo held by the machine.

Notes to Self

The recursive mirror is not just a technical trick. Repetition and mutation become a metaphor for alienation, but also for transformation. Standing in front of this system is not about watching a machine at work; it’s about entering the tunnel yourself.

The viewer doesn’t just observe the artwork, they become the artwork.