Cat Miller
Album Amicorum
Summary
Album Amicorum—which means "album of friends" in Latin—explores how the hidden can be made visible, through narrative, image, text, sound and emerging technologies.
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.
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, which I have compiled into two volumes (Creatrix and Noetic Poetics).
The use of emerging technology enables the viewer to hear the adult thoughts of the artist whilst viewing childhood photographs from the artist's family album at the same 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. I also used some of these songs to explore a motion-capture dance sequence for a VR experience to invoke a sense of playfulness.
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 —two poetic volumes 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.
To my knowledge, Album Amicorum is the first digitally augmented Artist’s Book of its kind, potentially extending beyond the archives of special collections.
Additional info
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.
MRes 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, and the notion that free will allows us to make choices at any given moment in time, that are either a) grounded in ‘The Presence of Love’ or b) in the absence of ‘Love’s Presence’.
I propose that what we are able to initiate by becoming more mindful of our everyday choices is a return to an underlying matrilineal wisdom, that operates in harmony with the earth’s natural frequencies, cycles and rhythms.
In my thesis I reference the archaeological dig in Dorset, which has uncovered the matrilineal community known as The Durotrigues, who are referenced by Ptolomy 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 48AD, Ancient Briton 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 conception is not so much a biological occurrence but a vibrational one, and that the “right frequency”—specifically, the frequency of unconditional love—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 that “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.
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 mythology 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.
Key topics of research:
- 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
- Feminist Al—avoiding repetition of patriarchal patterns
- The amplification of love through cymatics and the healing effects of pattern, shape, colour, light and sound.
NB: This thesis also builds upon my former 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 in 2019 whilst completing an MA in Book Arts at Camberwell, UAL and is available to read or download for free from the Wellcome Collection website.
VIVA Edit
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.
XR Demo
Instructions
- Scan the QR Code (below).
- Tap: Accept > Start AR > Allow—a taskbar will indicate the data is loading.
- Hold your smartphone camera over the first image (below)—a song will start playing automatically.
- Each image triggers a different song.
- To stop the songs from playing, close the browser window.
- If there is no sound, try disabling your VPN and/or copy-paste the URL 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

Nóēma Poēma brings together two volumes—Creatrix and Noetic Poetics—into one comprehensive collection, consisting of 375 pages, 115 titles plus some new previously unpublished content.
The poems from this archive collection now featured as songs in the Album Amicorum project are:
- Angels on Earth (1995)
- Love Is (1996)
- Joy Smile (1997) |
- Now is the New Now (1998)
- Prayer Song (1998)
- WLTM GSOH (2004)
- Reflections (2004)
- Swim (2005)
- Holiness of the Heart (2009)
- Elixir of Love (2010)
- Kaleidoscope Memories (2020)
- Polaris (2022)
- Praxis (2023)
- Self-Mastery (2025)
Analogue Materiality



Excerpt from 'SouLutions', published in Noetic Poetics, page 101.

Using folds to deconstruct text.

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.
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
Etymology
—The Album Amicorum, also known as the 'Alba Amicorum', was an early form of the poetry book, an 'album of friends,' which evolved into the autograph book, friendship book and an album of souvenirs. The word 'album' originates from the word 'alba' meaning 'white', as in a white page, or a 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.
Dedication
In loving memory of Patricia, Nellie and Walter.