ESSAY | DOPPELGÄNGER. Reflections, Replicas and the Self in the Age of the Digital Double

We live in a time of endless reflection. One body, many selves, physical and digital, authentic and fabricated, curated and corrupted, fractured across timelines, networks and platforms. The notion of the doppelgänger has haunted human consciousness for centuries, surfacing in ancient myth, in psychoanalysis, in cinema, and now in the very devices we keep in our pockets. Today, it is not merely a spectral figure or literary trope; it is a login, a bot, a dataset. A silent algorithmic mirror that watches, predicts and sometimes betrays.

The Doppelgänger exhibition, curated by Yev Kravt, brings together digital 12 artists, designers and architects whose practices engage with mirroring and multiplicity. Some approach these themes philosophically, others through a social lens. Some address it  performatively, with an air of deliberate deceit. All of those featured here work on the same unsettling question: In a world where everything can be copied, what remains that is still real?

Seeing Double

Throughout history and across cultures, the double has served as both aspiration and threat, representing our hopes as well as our fears. In myth, the twin can take the form of a divine companion, a ghostly spirit, a paranormal appearance or an embodiment of the soul. In the mythology of Ancient Egypt, a ka was a tangible "spirit double" that shared the same memories and feelings as the person to whom it was attached. In literature, as in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Double (1846), the replica instead becomes a harbinger of psychological unrest: “A terrible multitude of duplicates has sprung into being.” Elsewhere, Carl Jung famously termed our hidden counterpart the “shadow self”, a darker side we repress and cannot bear to see. Ursula K. Le Guin’s speculative worlds also touch on dualities: male/female, light/dark, real/unreal, revealing how identity can be a fluid territory of constant negotiation.

In cinema, Jordan Peele’s Us (2019) imagines underground doubles who rise up to haunt their earthly equivalents, making us ask, “What elements of ourselves do we strive to bury, and what happens when these things surface?”  Alfred Hitchcock called the tumultuous state of living in the presence of doppelgangers “vertigo” in his 1958 classic of the same name. Perhaps Peele and Hitchcock might both have found value in the ideas of Mexican philosopher Emilio Uranga, who coined the Spanish term zozobra to connote a particular sense of existential anxiety,  deep gloom and general wobbliness “that incessantly oscillates between two possibilities…not knowing which one to depend on”, absurdity and gravity, danger and safety, death and life. 

Manufactured Realities

Though our interest in the double might be ancient, our new reality multiplies the self by design, across social media, virtual worlds and AI-driven platforms. This exhibition unfolds entirely within a digital copy of the Taiteen Talo in Finland, a 3D-rendered institution that is itself a doppelgänger of the physical space in Turku. Visitors enter through a specially designed virtual pavilion, a threshold that hints at the illusions ahead. Once inside, an underground corridor reveals artworks that appear familiar, variations on known paintings, sculptures or architectural forms, yet they have all been warped by algorithmic processes and machine learning. AI in many ways is a replica of human behaviour: it trains itself on our images, our words, our ideas and our histories. At its core, it is the ultimate doppelganger of all that has ever existed.

As writer and social activist Naomi Klein writes in her book Doppelgänger (2023), the self can be branded, digitised, idealised or even weaponised. We project the parts of ourselves we cannot bear onto others, fracturing our view of the world into countless mirrored shards. Klein suggests that our historical moment feels uncanny precisely because we exist amid so many “synthetic selves and manufactured realities.” In this sense, the doppelgänger is more than a literary or mythical figure; it is a symptom of how we see, and refuse to see, ourselves and others. The doubles we establish share one thing in common: they are all ways of not seeing clearly. Not seeing ourselves, because we’re too busy performing an idealised version of who we think we should be. And not seeing the world, because we’ve partitioned our vision, cut it into mirrors and blocked out the connections that bind us. This is the uncanny feeling of our time: a moment flooded with reflections, synthetic selves and manufactured realities.

The Mirror Brain

Beneath these cultural narratives and social dynamics lies a biological structure that drives us to mirror one another: mirror neurons. Discovered through the research of neuroscientist Giacomo Rizzolatti, these neurons fire not only when we perform an action, but also when we observe another performing the same action. This deep-rooted “in-built empathy” has given rise to new theories about learning, emotional resonance and the evolution of language. Yet, in a world saturated with digital clones and algorithmic doubles, what happens to our mirror neurons when the other is not human, but a simulation?

As technology grows more adept at mimicking human faces, voices and even our creative processes, we become increasingly likely to seek out emotional bonds with these various non-human entities. But can these bonds serve as genuine pathways to understanding, or do they paradoxically alienate us from ourselves? The world of film has grappled with these questions extensively: Spike Jonze’s Her (2013) asks whether intimacy with an AI can be real if the other has no body, whilst Total Recall (1990, and its 2012 remake) blurs the line between authentic experience and implanted memory. The doppelgänger in these films is less a person than a malfunctioning version of the self, a self with altered recall, or no memory at all. The critically acclaimed TV-series Severance pushes this concept further still, asking: If you sever memory between work and home, are you still one person, or two?

Elsewhere, Adrian Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder (1990) pushes the doppelgänger into the realm of hallucination and metaphysics. Its protagonist spirals into unreality, only for us to learn he’s already dead. Just like Fight Club, the story becomes, in effect, a cinematic version of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, a guide through liminal space where the self is untethered like a mirror in freefall. Then there’s The Matrix (1999–), a modern techno-myth. Neo, a hacker, awakens to discover that everything he thought was real is a simulation designed by machines. The philosophical echo is unmistakable: Cogito ergo sum, “I think, therefore I am.” But what if your thoughts are also a projection? What if you yourself are the doppelgänger?

Turning to literature, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) is another essential parable. A young man remains eternally youthful while his painted portrait, hidden away, absorbs the consequences of his sins. Eventually, the painting turns monstrous, a corrupted mirror, and when Dorian finally confronts it, the roles reverse. The man dies, grotesque and decayed, while the painting regains its innocent form. Here, art becomes the doppelgänger: a surface that remembers what the body refuses.

Now more urgent than ever, discussions on artificial intelligence have raged for some time. Perhaps the ultimate double, this technology is forged in our image and trained on our thoughts. In I, Robot (2004), based on the stories of Isaac Asimov, the very systems designed to serve us begin to turn against their creators. The same premise underpins The Terminator films: intelligent machines designed to help us evolve, now bent on erasing us. In time travel films like Timecop and Back to the Future, attention turns instead to the implications of uniting two versions of one same within a single moment in time, questioning if one version has a greater claim to realness than the other? In the 2019 Gemini Man, this threat comes into focus when a hitman confronts his younger, cloned self; the double here becomes not just a replica but a threat—a mirror that fights back.

This concept takes a darker, more bodily turn in The Substance (2024), directed by Coralie Fargeat. In the film, a mysterious product allows a woman, played by Demi Moore, to extract an improved version of herself: younger, sexier, more socially valued. The catch, though, is existential. The original self must make room for the double, maintaining a sacred balance between both roles. The moment one dominates the other, the illusion collapses into body horror. The message is clear: becoming your “better self” demands sacrifice and restraint.

Beyond fiction, the idea of the double is proliferating in the digital wilds. On TikTok, conspiracy theories abound. Pop stars “replaced” by clones, political figures mirrored by body doubles, dead artists who “never really died.” These stories may sound absurd, but they speak to a deeper anxiety: if what we see can so easily be faked, who can we trust and who are we, really? And if perfect replication is possible, does identity become irrelevant? Once a literary motif, the double is now a structural condition. It lives in your feed, in your memories, in the code. And increasingly, it refuses to be a passive reflection. It acts.

Digital Twin

What happens when your reflection no longer reflects you? Can a double outlive the self? And in a world where everything can be copied, what remains real? As we scroll through social feeds, enter dialogue with AI assistants or slip into VR headsets, do we become more connected or more fragmented? Are we glimpsing our future or confronting new shadows? The doppelgänger speaks to the tension between these extremes—between liberating multiplicity and existential dread, between transcendent self-knowledge and inescapable self-deception.

The artists, designers and architects in Doppelgänger. Reflections, Replicas, and the Self in the Age of the Digital Double approach many of the aforementioned questions from every angle; some embrace the beauty of fluid identities, while others reveal the potential dangers of manipulation and echo chambers. The digital replica of the TAITEEN TALO in Turku becomes a stage where illusions meet realities, leaving visitors to navigate a labyrinth of layered narratives. Through this carefully-choreographed journey, you might just find that the most unsettling reflection is the one that greets you in the mirror each morning.

Portraits by Mike Pelletier