Inside the Mirror Pool

A practice exploring art, perception, narrative systems, and how attention takes shape — in humans and in machines.

Moving across painting and visual studies, alongside film, writing, and sound, I treat perception as material: frame, rhythm, stance.

Cinematic thinking shapes the method; AI becomes a medium of inquiry.

Intentionally slow work—conditions for reflection rather than conclusions.



Work
Visual studies, writing, film, audio.

Studio
I work with organisations and individuals on narrative, framing, and identity-driven systems—including AI and governance—through advisory and project-based collaborations.





Links:
Home
Films
Art / Visual Studies
Writing
Audio
Studio
About
Contact


Films

Studies in attention and framing, 
with AI as a medium of inquiry.



Selected films appear on YouTube








recalcitrance / perceptual constraints, 2026




identity, 2025

Art / Visual Studies


Paintings, sketches and photography test structure, surface, and duration—studies in attention, framing, and uncertainty signals.

The work unfolds through return and variation rather than resolution.

Attention is composed by framing, repetition of register, and the intervals between images.


Selected works appear on Instagram



Sequential Montage
This work develops through adjacency rather than narrative.

Images are placed in relation, allowing perception to unfold across pauses, returns, and shifts in attention.

Sound studies run alongside the images—shaping pacing, atmosphere, and emphasis.
     






Contact Studies
This work investigates how surfaces register contact.
Marmoleum (linseed-oil linoleum) is used as a natural yet industrial ground—made to endure force, weight, and wear through human interaction. Materials are tested through pressure, lift, and interruption.

Marks are not added as images but produced through contact—traces that persist as bodily remembrance, as system and body align and realign through misfit.






Sequential Montage
An inquiry into the face as surface and the body as site of mediation.

Through staged photography, images are subjected to normalisation, distortion, and re-alignment.

The work examines how recognition systems translate presence into data. Identity shifts under negotiated pressure.

Writing


Writing moves between reflection, fiction, and automatic forms.

It observes how thought behaves when control loosens and how framing alters what becomes legible.

Publication on Substack



assembling Osiris in the age of AI

open essay



the decadence of uncertainty

open essay




between emergency and peace

open essay


croissant

open essay



Audio

Audio versions of selected works are available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.









Studio

Studio is where this artistic practice becomes applied.

The work presented across this site is unabridged and exploratory — developed as an artistic and intellectual practice rather than a professional or corporate artefact. It is intentionally unconstrained, allowing ideas, materials, and methods to remain open, provisional, and incomplete.

Alongside this, I work with organisations, institutions, and individuals on narrative, framing, and identity-driven systems — across artistic, academic, and technological contexts.

Some of this applied work involves artificial intelligence and reasoning systems, developed through a separate professional entity. That work operates under a different set of constraints than the practice presented here.

Other projects remain closer to art, research, and experimental inquiry, including collaborations with galleries, cultural institutions, and independent practitioners.

If the work elsewhere on this site resonates and you’d like to explore a collaboration — applied or exploratory — you’re welcome to get in touch.


About

This space is not designed to be consumed quickly. 


It is for those drawn to processes rather than conclusions—for people who recognise an internal tension between intuition and structure, image and language, analysis and feeling, and who are interested in how that tension can be held rather than resolved.

The work moves between modes often kept separate: artistic perception and systems thinking, embodied attention and abstract reasoning. Not to reconcile them, but to let them inform one another. It is practice-led and inquiry-led, moving between making, reading, and analysis.

There is no prescribed way to read, watch, or listen here. The material is offered as a surface for reflection: a place where meaning forms through pacing, proximity, and return.

If you’re looking for answers, this may feel indirect. If you’re attentive to process, you may recognise something familiar.


                                                                                  
Masha Ivanhoe

Contact

Email: masha@insidethemirrorpool.com

Instagram 

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