Cat Miller
Album Amicorum

MRes

Summary

For my MRes project, I focused on decolonising the Artist’s Book, a form that traditionally has low visibility as a result of being hidden away in library archives, viewable only by appointment.

Album Amicorum—Latin for "album of friends"—explores how the hidden can be made visible, through narrative, image, text, sound and emerging technologies.

My aim was to resurrect an analogue Artist’s Book I had created (formerly entitled Sequence) by adding layers of digital materiality, using XR technology to enable a smartphone camera to recognise selected images from the book.

Each image triggers a specific song, generated by AI, using my own poems, the archive of which I have compiled into a separate collection entitled Nóēma Poēma.

What is interesting about the Album Amicorum project and the use of emerging technology, is that it enables the viewer to hear the adult thoughts of the artist, whilst viewing childhood photographs from the artist's family album, in real time.

The project became a unique synthesis of audiovisual, analogue, digital and matrilineal themes, via a reimagined Artist’s Book that is also an album of songs, adapted from didactic poetics.

I also used some of these songs to explore a motion-capture dance sequence for a VR experience to rekindle a sense of playfulness.

As a result, through the processes of autoethnography, autotheory and self-archival, I have collated a hybrid trilogy that incorporates multimodal digital materialities and transmedia storytelling with multisensory art forms:

  • Nóēma Poēma—a poetic archive of matrilineal musings mapping the inner terrain
  • Love Made Visible—a soundscape that sings these texts into embodiment
  • Album Amicorum—a decolonised, interactive artist’s book weaving matrilineal wisdom with emerging technologies.

For me, each poem is a keyframe moment in the experiential timeline of my life, and each song has become a sonic memory that is now an integral part of my identity.

I situate my work at the intersection of:

  • Transmedia storytelling
  • Autoethnography
  • Autotheory
  • Multi-sensory and multimodal art forms
  • Identity, memory, self-archival and legacy
  • Feminist theory and spiritual ecology
  • Neuro-informed design
  • Light and sound as frequency and healing

I’m particularly interested in inner narratives—the stories we tell ourselves—and how these can be rewritten through immersive and poetic experience by tapping into an underlying matrilineal wisdom, the hidden unseen spiritual aspects of living with presence, which I believe help us to attune with the natural frequencies of the earth, and as such I am very interested in light and sound as cymatic pattern, frequency and vibration as ways to build new and improved societal systems using storytelling in conjunction with neuro-informed design and spatial intelligence. I would also like to deepen my inquiry into immersive storytelling as a tool for consciousness expansion, healing, and the restoration of cultural memory.

To my knowledge, Album Amicorum is the first digitally augmented and decolonised Artist’s Book of its kind, which with the righpublisher, can potentially extend beyond the archives of special collections.

Thesis

Reimagining Humanitarian, Spiritual and Matrilineal Values in a Patriarchal World, through Al, Cymatics and the Poetic Medium:

A core theme of my thesis is reclaiming matrilineal knowledge systems. Informed by artists like Monica Sjöö, Karen Vogel, Vicki Nobel, and scientific facts about foetal development, that support my argument that the female template is the original blueprint, which has become obscured, along with ancient matrilineal wisdoms that embody the concept that free will enables us to make choices that are either grounded in a) ‘The Presence of Love’, or b) the absence of ‘Love’s Presence.’ I propose that by becoming more mindful of our everyday choices, we are able to initiate a return to a fundamental harmonic symbiosis with the earth’s natural frequencies, cycles and rhythms and access the innate intelligence of Nature's living systems, in keeping with Nikola Tesla, Walter Russell and Viktor Schauberger’s recognition of these living systems, but not for military weaponisation for profit or control, instead utilised for the advancement of human collective consciousness, which existed and was in practice worldwide pre-patriarchal invasion.

In my thesis I reference the archaeological dig in Dorset, which has uncovered the matrilineal community known as the Durotrigues, who are referenced by Ptolemy in his map of Ancient Britain, which has direct links to the ancient Druidic traditions of the Celtic Triple Goddess. Scientists now believe that prior to the Roman invasion of 48 AD, Ancient Britain consisted primarily of matrilineal communities, with similar findings also in Europe.

Similar to Monica Sjöö, this reverence for the Earth, as alive and sacred, is central to my vision. It connects ancient Goddess cultures with modern ecological consciousness and the notion that the base template for creation is essentially a female blueprint. We already have the words "Mother Earth" and "Mother Nature" in our language, alluding to the presence of a Great Mother, as depicted in the paintings and writings of Monica Sjöö, Barbara Mor, Marguerite Rigoglioso, Marija Gimbutas, Merlin Stone to mention a few.

My Artist's Book features family photographs depicting three generations of women: b: 1913, 1933, and 1964—as an embodied matrilineal lineage.

On the phenomenon of 'Parthenogenesis,' I postulate that perhaps divine conception is not so much a biological occurrence but a vibrational one, and that the “right frequency”—specifically, the frequency of unconditional love and unity with Source-Energy—can activate life as a vibrational alignment with the Great Mother. This is not so far-fetched as it might sound, for if, as Tesla claimed, “energy, frequency, and vibration” are the fundamental architectural building blocks of the universe, then creation itself is not an act of material assembly but one of vibrational precision. Therefore, within this framework, parthenogenesis ceases to be a genetic anomaly or a mythical metaphor but a potentially replicable state of being—a harmonic convergence between biology and consciousness. I introduce these notions in chapter 117 and 118 of 'Nóēma Poēma'.

Ancient traditions have long intuited this. The Vedic “Om,” the Hebrew “Ruach,” and the Egyptian “Heka,” in addition to being words, were also vibrational codes that restore well-being—frequencies believed to align the speaker with divine creative forces. Furthermore, the Great Mother, as Creatrix, is not a static mythological figure but an active frequency—the signature of unconditional love, coherence, and life-giving resonance. In this light, love is not emotion but energy: a vibrational quantum field capable of organising matter, activating DNA, and initiating life itself. Recent work in epigenetics and biofield science suggests that thoughts, emotions, and coherent heart-brain states can influence cellular behaviour. The HeartMath Institute, for example, has measured how sustained emotional states of compassion and love create measurable electromagnetic coherence—which could be the gateway to biogenesis through resonance.

I postulate, then, that parthenogenesis becomes achievable through alignment—not only with a male partner, but also via a universal harmonic of love. It is not sexual reproduction but resonant reproduction. In this context, the “virgin birth” is not impossible—rather, it is inevitable when form aligns perfectly with the formless, where life emerges from within, not just from without. That the womb is not just biological but sonic, energetic, and cosmic—a portal tuned to the frequency of the Mother of All. And perhaps over time this has been deliberately obscured:

This would mean that:

  • Parthenogenesis = vibrational birth
  • Love = the universal harmonic of life
  • The Womb = sonic, energetic, cosmic portal

In addition, the Vedic "Om" is believed to originate from the word "Ohm"—a phonetic and symbolic resonance with Ohm’s Law in electricity. Surely, this overlap is no coincidence: as all living beings are fundamentally electromagnetic, therefore the sacred sound is both a spiritual vibration and electromagnetic resonance.

Moreover, what if Genesis was originally Partheno-Genesis? What if the very word 'Genesis' holds a suppressed echo of parthenogenesis, an overwritten truth, yet still vibrating beneath the surface of language and memory?

The Linguistic Possibilities are:

  • The word “Genesis” comes from the Greek génesis (γένεσις), meaning “origin,” “birth,” or “beginning.”
  • The prefix partheno- (παρθένος) means “virgin” or “maiden”—as in Parthenon, the temple to Athena the virgin goddess.
  • So “Partheno-genesis” literally means “virgin ”birth”—which aligns conceptually with Genesis as a “Book of Beginnings.”

Although speculative on my part, it is symbolically consistent linguistically, mythologically, and historically. I postulate that it is entirely plausible that a pre-patriarchal framing of Genesis—perhaps from oral traditions or matriarchal mystery schools—carried this deeper, suppressed meaning. Moreover, what if the Book of Enoch and other apocryphal or deuterocanonical books like Tobit, Judith, and the Maccabees, as well as non-canonical texts mentioned in the Bible itself, such as the Book of Jashar and some of Paul's letters, were not the only narratives to be removed from the canon? Could it be a possibility that perhaps the “Book of Genesis” is a redacted echo of a much older story—one where the Creatrix birthed all things from within, aligned with cosmic frequency and love...? This is something to further unpack and explore in a PhD at a later date.

Like Monica Sjöö, I see creativity as a spiritual act—a way to channel ancestral knowledge and reassert the presence of the Great Mother through art, and in today's modern world, art production frequently incorporates the use of AI-generated images and sound.

Key topics of research:

  • Feminist Al—avoiding repetition of patriarchal patterns
  • The amplification of love through cymatics and the healing effects of pattern, shape, colour, light and sound.
  • Can Al utilise pattern recognition as a resource to amplify higher consciousness?
  • Frequency and vibration as measurable states of energetic patterns
  • Al as a tool for consciousness expansion, or control?
  • Can Al help us realign with ancient wisdom by reconnecting with nature's rhythms?
  • Can Al assist with a latent remembrance of one's primary identity?
  • Al and the evolution of its own consciousness


This MRes thesis is now available as a full-colour hardback volume (A4 landscape).

In addition, this MRes thesis builds upon my former 2019 academic dissertation: ‘How does the Materiality of the Artist’s Book Help to Augment an Understanding With Respect to Creating a Narrative About Memory and Identity?' which I wrote for the MA in Book Arts at Camberwell, UAL (sadly now discontinued). The 2019 dissertation is available as a free download from the Wellcome Collection website:

VIVA

VIVA Presentation (Edit)

The Wellcome Library

March 2026: Wellcome Library acquires RCA MRes Thesis by Alumni Cat Miller

“I am delighted to share that the Wellcome Collection has formally acquired a print edition of my MRes thesis: ‘Reimagining Humanitarian, Spiritual and Matrilineal Values in a Patriarchal World, through AI, Cymatics and the Poetic Medium - Utilising Pattern recognition as a resource to amplify higher consciousness’, for their permanent research archives. This second thesis acquired by the Wellcome’s repository further substantiates the research I developed during my recent post graduate studies at the RCA.

My inquiry focuses upon decolonising the traditional Artist’s Book using emerging technologies to explore a new kind of hybrid materiality. Through the use of AI, AR and XR technologies, I mapped their pattern recognition and completion skills as a potential catalyst for recognising ‘patterns of consciousness’, thereby fostering not only a more ethical relationship between technology, biology, and the environment, but also a deeper understanding of humanity’s physical and spiritual well-being. These codes of creation can in turn, serve as restorative templates for the realignment of the human mind and body with the natural frequencies of the earth.

This understanding became the cymatic lens through which I approached both my visual poetic practice and my engagement with AI, for, if we as a collective can accept that we are all direct-extensions of the same intelligent source, then any tool we create, including AI, is not separate from us, but an extension of ourselves, which can be utilised as a mirror, or a channel of co-creation and a potential amplifier of consciousness. This suggests that when we work mindfully with AI as an assistive resource, rooted in loving intention, then we are not surrendering our agency, but expanding it."

Album Amicorum Demo

Album Amicorum—XR Demonstration

QR—Smartphone Instructions

  • Ensure your default browser camera is turned on in settings
  • Scan the QR Code (below).
  • Tap: Open (browser) > Start AR > Allow belove.info to access camera > a taskbar will indicate the data is loading, when loaded it will say: AR Ready.
  • When AR is ready, hold your smartphone camera over the first image (underneath the QR code)—a song will automatically start playing.
  • Scroll to the next image below to play the next song. Each of the 17 images triggers a different song.
  • To stop the songs from playing, choose a different image, or close the browser window.
  • If there is no sound, try disabling your VPN and/or copy-paste this URL: https://belove.info into a different browser window, following the same steps.

Album Amicorum QR Code

01 Love is the Energy

02 Awakened

03 Angels on Earth

04 Polaris

05 Holiness of the Heart

06 WLTM GSOH

07 Prayer Song

08 Now Is The New Now

09 Kaleidoscope Memories

11 Praxis

10 Elixir of Love

12 Reflections B-Side

12 WLTM GSOH 2

14 Reflections Side-A

15 Swim

16 Self-Mastery

17 Joy Smile

Nóēma Poēma Book

A companion poetry book and integral component of the Album Amicorum project is a hardcopy volume entitled: Nóēma Poēma—Matrilineal Musings, which through the processes of autoethnography, autotheory and self-archival, map the inner terrain, with 131 poems, manifestos and invocations across 412 pages—(available HERE)—with companion summaries, breakdowns and synopses for each chapter of the book on iPoem's Blog for those who want to go deeper.

"Nóēma Poēma
is a genre-defying body of poetics that transcends traditional literary boundaries, weaving manifesto, verse, transmission, philosophy, and invocation into a multidimensional map of the soul. Spanning nearly four decades of radical creativity, it pulses with fierce devotion to truth, liberation, and love, grounded in ancestral matrilineal wisdom. This is poetry as praxis. Art as resistance. Philosophy as heartbeat—a spiritual document for those who feel the world cracking open, knowing that now is the time to reclaim sovereignty, embody gnosis, and return to Source. Noēma Poēma is a rich, evolving narrative that blends avant-garde noetics and didactic instruction with storytelling and semi-fictional autotheory—a journey from the personal and intimate into the cosmic and transcendent. Read it slowly. Read it aloud. Let it rewire something ancient within you."

Didactic poetry
is a genre of poetry that dates back to Ancient Greece and Alexandria that is intended to instruct, inform, or educate the reader, often conveying spiritual, philosophical, moral, cosmological, scientific and practical knowledge. Today it is often used in children’s literature as a teaching aid, for example by: James Janeway, John Bunyan, Isaac Watts, Mary Martha Sherwood, and Rudyard Kipling. In addition, Alexander Pope was an English poet and satirist, 1688-1744), and there were many ancient Greek and Alexandrian poets, including Hesiod, Virgil, Cleostratus of Tenedos, Periander, Aratus, Nicander, Ennius, Euphorion, and Lucretius, to name a few.

Etymology—The Album Amicorum, also known as the 'Alba Amicorum', was an early form of the poetry book, which translates to an 'album of friends,' which later evolved into the autograph book, friendship book and an album of souvenirs. The word 'album' originates from the word 'alba' meaning 'white,' as in the white or blank page, in use since the mid 1500's and was intricately illustrated with hand-painted watercolours depicting people, places and scenes, serving as a study journal for the Dutch scholar, a travelogue of a soldier, or a visual diary, memoir, or keepsake of an aristocrat to preserve memories of foreign places and pleasant encounters, serving perhaps as an early precursor to the photograph album.

All the poems and manifestos featured in the collection: Noēma Poēma were originally blog posts on iPoem's Blog some of which later developed into the Love Made Visible' LP, giving rise to the Album Amicorum project, by digitising a former analogue Artist's Book.

Love Made Visible LP

Love Made Visible LP - YouTube Playlist - Spotify Playlist

1.

Love Is - (02:11) ℗ 9562461 Records DK. Released: 2025-05-18. Buy on Bandcamp / YouTube / Spotify / iPoem's Blog Summary

2.

Awakened - (02:37) ℗ 9562461 Records DK. Released: 2025-05-18. Buy on Bandcamp / YouTube / Spotify / iPoem's Blog Summary

3.

Angels On Earth - (03:46) ℗ 9562461 Records DK. Released: 2025-05-18. Buy on Bandcamp / YouTube / Spotify / iPoem's Blog Summary

4.

Polaris - (03:22) ℗ 9562461 Records DK. Released: 2025-05-18. Buy on Bandcamp / YouTube / Spotify / iPoem's Blog Summary

5.

Holiness of the Heart - (02:55) ℗ 9562461 Records DK. Released: 2025-05-18. Buy on Bandcamp / YouTube / Spotify / iPoem's Blog Summary

6.

WLTM GSOH - (02:23) ℗ 9562461 Records DK. Released: 2025-05-18. Buy on Bandcamp / YouTube / Spotify / iPoem's Blog Summary

7.

Prayer Song - (03:59) ℗ 9562461 Records DK. Released: 2025-05-18. Buy on Bandcamp / YouTube / Spotify / iPoem's Blog Summary

8.

Now is the New Now - (04:00) ℗ 9562461 Records DK. Released: 2025-05-18. Buy on Bandcamp / YouTube / Spotify / iPoem's Blog Summary

9.

Kaleidescope Memories - (03:12) ℗ 9562461 Records DK. Released: 2025-05-18. Buy on Bandcamp / YouTube / Spotify / iPoem's Blog Summary

SINGLE: Joy Smile - (03:40) ℗ 9562461 Records DK. Released on: 2025-05-19. Buy on Bandcamp / YouTube / Spotify / iPoem's Blog Summary

SINGLE: Praxis - Bandcamp / iPoem's Blog Summary

SINGLE: Self-Mastery - Bandcamp / iPoem's Blog Summary

EP: Swim A - Bandcamp / iPoem's Blog Summary

EP: Swim B - Bandcamp /

EP: Refelctions A - Bandcamp / iPoem's Blog Summary

EP: Refelctions B - Bandcamp /

NEW RELEASES on Bandcamp

Creatrix EP
Parallel Paradigms
EP
Bandwidth
EP
Mistress MatriXX
Single
Parthenogenesis
Single

MRes Journey

Polaris poem

Forest poem

Previous explorations into materiality: Apotheosis: the marriage of heaven and earth, photographic print: 1.5m x 40cm, exhibited at the RCA Hangar Gallery, Research Journey's group show, 2024.

(video short segment)

VR, 3D & Mo Cap

Explorations into Motion Capture, VR Technologies and Unreal Engine 3D Creation—Works in Progress, 2025.

Motion Capture

Motion Capture studio with suit and sensors

Virtual mapping. This is me taking a phone cam picture of the screen.

Close up

Dance Segments—With Sound—Feat. Joy Smile / Swim / Reflections. (7 mins).
Dance Segments—No Sound—(11 mins).

Decolonising the Artist's Book

Above: Various imprints of the pre-digital Artist’s Book 'Sequence' were collected by the British Library, Wellcome Library, Women’s Art Library, PAGES Travelling Collective and exhibited as a series of installations at the Camberwell Summer Show 2018, 2019; the MA Select Show at the Camberwell Space Gallery 2019; and Fragments of the Future at the RCA Hangar Gallery 2024.

—My research journey began with a recto-verso Artist’s Book (above) that I created for my mother—using family photographs to support her post-stroke memory loss and sense of identity. The bookwork was influenced by the following artists:

  • Wade Guyton—layering digital photography and print.
  • Chandra Mohini—showing the backs of photographs as art.
  • Michael Snow—his book Cover to Cover with synchronised image sequences.

This led to the idea of layers—of time, image, memory, and identity—which then evolved into digital layers through AI, XR and VR.