Following my gallery visit and seeing Olafur Eliasson’s “Seeing Tilted Mirrors,” I was keen to test how mirrors might interact with my moiré patterns. This experiment places printed acetate sheets over a mirror to explore how reflection affects the patterns and adds another layer of visual complexity.
Pattern #4 on mirror
Reflections and learning
This test shows promising results – simple to produce yet delivering immediate visual impact. The reflections in the mirror create additional dynamism in the patterns, generating even more depth than the light-pad experiments. There’s a shimmering quality that, gives the work a premium aesthetic.
Before running the experiment, I anticipated needing to increase the line weight of the pattern to compensate for the reflective surface. However, the current balance feels right – the lines maintain their clarity while the mirror adds its own optical contribution.
The main challenge is that the acetate has a slightly cloudy quality, making the reflected lower layer appear fainter compared to the light-pad versions from previous experiments, and this reduces some of the pattern’s vibrancy and contrast.
Next steps
To address the cloudiness issue and increase clarity, I’m planning to test a version where the lower layer pattern is printed directly onto the mirror surface, with the upper layer printed onto clear acrylic. Printing directly onto mirror will also eliminate the gap between the acetate and reflective surface, potentially creating tighter, more precise moiré effects.