Searching for a lost password. From "Mixed Reality" series.

Throughout his life, a person "lives" (accumulates) a certain experience, which, having passed through the contextual filters of the mind, is subjectively recorded in memory. The camera and lens simply refract the light and fix it on the image plane. The human eye, on the other hand, transmits light energy to the brain, where it is processed, converted into an electrical signal, associated with sound, smell, taste and touch, connected in our brain with the corresponding experiences, and sometimes even distorted.
 

With humor, irony and, to some extent, metaphysical mischief, Grigory Mayofis explores the inextricable link between photographic vision and human perception in his Mixed Reality project. In a series of narratives that he continues to work on, Mayofis introduces us to characters involved in a strange game: they perform actions that should be deeply sensual in nature, but their feelings are complemented by augmented reality glasses, and we observe the discord and absurdity of what is happening. Just as we don't know the personalities of the characters in the pictures, so the essence and purpose of the game or the games revealed to us remain unexplained.
 

Augmented reality itself can be seen as an attempt to overcome the limitations inherent in photography. For almost two centuries, since the invention of photography, numerous attempts have been made to bridge the gap between mechanical and human vision. 
 

The photographs taken by Maiofis are inherently paradoxical. These are ordinary staged photographs of the latest photographic technologies, but they are a clever deception that covers another, deeper one. Mayophis shows us not only the observer and the observed, he forces us (as observers) to stand face to face with the observed and contemplate what they observe. The meaning in these photos is multilevel, the "reality" is elusive. — Where is the truth? In the blinkered reality of a character with an augmented reality headset, or in the bodily reality that we, the audience, perceive? If you dig deeper, the question arises as to what the photographs of Maiofis themselves are: are they a literal observation or a metaphorical construction? His works push us to transfer our own experience of observers and witnesses to the experience of the characters.

Text: Phillip Prodger, Doctor, Senior Researcher, 
Yale University Center for British Art, USA