Mise en abyme.

We all get trapped by physical seduction but there is always an infinite number of layers that we should try to discover and explore because there lies the true beauty. Somehow to me "mise en abyme" reflects this thought in a perfect way. It is a French term that literally means "placed into abyss" or placing into infinity which is physically the most similar to feeling when standing between two mirrors. I've been obsessing over exploring "mise en abyme" and realized that examples of it can be found everywhere: in literature, art, film, photography because the rules about "infinity" part are not that strict as most of the plays within plays, paintings within paintings, stories within stories, pictures within pictures, dreams within dreams are considered to be mise en abyme.

Alain Fleischer - Dans le cadre du miroir, 1984.

During my digging on the subject, I found this photograph by Alain Fleischer and instantly fell in love with it, even though it's not the perfect example of "mise en abyme" but I love its playfulness on the subject.

One of the wittiest examples that I've stumbled upon is Pink Floyd's cover for their album from 1969. - "Ummagumma" . On the first impression, it looks as if the same image is reflected in the mirror over and over again but if you look closely, you notice that the band members switch positions in each image.

Pink Floyd's cover for "Ummagumma", 1969.

So back to my first thought...In order to explore and discover all those layers, I guess one should place something into infinity. However, brilliant scene from "Escape from the Planet of the Apes" where they explain infinite regression, adds an important detail to this. Quantic sampled it in such a great way:

So infinite regression is--

--It is the moment when our artist,
having regressed to the point of
infinity, himself becomes a part
of the picture he has painted and
is both the Observer and the observed.