Alter Ego | Mixed Media Project

What do we mean when we say "alter ego"? One definition given by Webster's Dictionary means "a second self or different version of oneself: such as a trusted friend, or the opposite side of a personality" ¹

Without delving too deep into the mental aspect of the term, the word "alter ego" was first used in the 19th century. It was invented by psychologists when discussing dissociative identity disorder.

However, the term was adapted in the fictional writing. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is one example of an alter ego. Mr. Hyde is Dr. Jekyll's evil alter ego, the same person but with different personalities.

In the Comics, Batman, Superman, Spiderman, and other superhero characters all adopted an alter ego to disguise themselves while they were off on their missions to save the world from one disaster or another.

In these scenarios, the alto egos were personalities presented as superior to the ordinary individual and could accomplish feats they and no one else could. I've always wondered why keep their identifies hidden.

Another use of the term applied to the arts: music and writing where artists adopted alto egos also called pseudonyms. The artists attempted to expand or reduce their known presence to cover other areas of their personalities through the pen or instrument.

For music, examples can be seen in rapper Eminen's persona as Slim Shady. Others are one of my favorite musicians, David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust; and Brian Warner's Marilyn Manson. That last one mentioned has me scratching my head to understand.

I believe that alter ego means the best version of one's self; whether docile and demure or outgoing and living to the extreme, larger than life and not caring what others thing about it.

What's your opinion about an alter ego when it pertains a better version of yourself?

^Source

For this mixed media project, I utilized a variety of free-sourced images, together with my pure fractals I created in Apophyis 7X, the advanced version of the fractal rendering program. Three different two different females were used to portray an alter ego. Instead of one version of herself, she chose two. I think I'd love to have wings and be able to liftoff.

Below are my steps utilizing Canva, my design program, to blend the different type images. I leave with you my procedures which began with a blank, white canvas. I then switched the background to peach before adding layers of elements in accordance with my upgraded Annual Pro Membership that includes tools to remove backgrounds, resize, filter, duplicate, and reposition items as required.

Perhaps of all the tools, the ability to remove backgrounds thereby creating transparencies of the images is crucial to the blending process.

I included in my theme the following images.

^{Female with flashes of light on face ~ Punk Rock female ~ Woman with red wings sitting ~ Abstract mixed shapes red background ~ Black Striped Sun hat - Contributed to the #LIL by @agmoore ~ Red Circle ~ Black Bars Downward - Abstract image created by me in Bomomo ~ Orange grain wood image ~ Shadow Man #2 - Contributed to the #LIL by @bayuismail ~ Pure Fractal titled "Gaussian Blur - Red" - Pure Fractal titled "Beard Red" ~ Pure Fractal titled "X Cross Red" ~ Pure Fractal titled "Curtains - Red}