This article aims at establishing the foundations for a/r/cography as an "art and communication"-based research methodology, inspired by a/r/tography yet more encompassing, and particularly suitable for the digital art world. As part of the larger family of practice-based research methodologies, a/r/tography presents various ways through which it can be explored, but since it is aimed at the arts and education, its scope is forcibly hampered by the fact that not all researchers and artpractitioners are necessarily teachers. However, since most of its underlying principles can be extended for non-teachers, thus arose the idea to propose a methodology that would retain ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions, but would expand beyond the limitations imposed by the role of the teacher. This extension is called a/r/cography and is structured upon the interchangeable roles of artist, researcher and communicator, as being intrinsic to the underlying living inquiry processes. Furthermore, this proposal is supported by the author's own experience from a/r/cographic processes in the creation, exhibition and communication of digital artworks.

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The Everywhere Museum of Everything is a research and action proposal founded on the array of aestheticised online content, which can be purposefully and critically curated in order to create a meaningful territory of contemporary online culture, art and knowledge creation. This abundance of content is rooted in a culture of consumerism, blackboxed mobile applications and social networks. Individual experiences in the physical world have been transformed by onlineness, a combination of the pervasive use of mobile devices and applications over Internet access, used to share opinions and evidence through original and remixed media, often complemented by hashtagging. Even if the majority of this content quickly becomes irrelevant and forgotten, it can still be accessed through an augmented view of the world, as digital media is frequently anchored to locations through geotagging or referencing. This vast collection lacks systematization and classification, but presents multiple possibilities for artists, curators and scholars.

This article addresses and questions the magic-mirror phenomenon, popularised by current smartphone selfie and video capture apps. This phenomenon stimulates the illusion of control over the appearance of the face, either through applying semi-automatic soft filters to highlight the face area, to smooth the skin or correct the posture; or through the use of humorous add-ons or distortions, such as bunny ears or anime features, among others. However these results are short-lived, as their publication in social networks is either ephemeral – as a story – or timed to become invisible or irrelevant – in the timeline stream. Cumulatively they leave little margin (if at all) to stimulate a deeper reflection on the subject of (self) identity, and could thus be reduced to an expression of narcissism and consumption rather than a shared, transformative, meaningful practice. The two generative artworks described in this article, on the other hand, seek to guide the visitor beyond the visual magic-mirror through thought-provoking and reflective processes, where face-based audio-visual trance inducing cycles are used to hint at new identities and possibilities, challenging species, race, gender and age. These artworks seek to immerse the visitor, with narrowed awareness of external surroundings and stimuli, with a deepened focus in a synesthetic experience of flow, aiming at an altered perception of the self. If appearance can act as a tool to communicate one’s identity to others, this article ponders the possibility that such a synesthetic environment can be artivistically used to influence the perception of the self.