Mimesis is the negotiation between creator and viewer. Or, more accurately, the interplay between original and copy, as the act of viewing is also an act of copying (Taussig 21). However, it is fundamentally impossible to define a true "original" as any creation is ultimately a copy of something which existed within the creator's head while that image in the creator's head is a distorted (and "culturally-attuned") copy of something in the world. Indeed, on a scientific level, what we observe is in some sense merely a "copy" of light created by the object which reflects and refracts it, after distorting it through its own biases.

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