Personal and internal Manifesto/Diary
A diary is a personal object, and precisely because of this, it holds two contradictory qualities. It is usually locked and sealed by its owner; only the author can access its contents. It functions as a pure form of expression, grounded in the author’s self-interpretation. The author (for simplicity, ‘he’ as a neutral human subject) is the creator of the narrative.
Yet here arises a complication: while the author writes the text, its meaning emerges through the reader’s interpretation. This is not to say the reader is the ultimate authority or origin of meaning, but rather that between author and reader, there exists a gap that cannot be fully bridged. Language—through grammar and vocabulary defined by collective rules—seeps into this gap, shaping and mediating meaning.
If the author wishes to assert ownership of meaning, he must become objectified, zealously performing self-expression. He must embody the rulebook itself, resisting interference by alternative representations. Here, the “author” is not limited to the writer but extends to any self-creating figure—designer, artist, or any form of maker.
Does form define function? The author may be understood as:
- A figure of technical expertise,
- A bearer of stylistic signature, and
- A consistent visionary who, through project choices and aesthetic treatment, evokes an interior meaning.
There are many possible approaches to authorship. Personally, I believe that the most potent is the physical death of the author. John Berger and Susan Sontag once discussed when a novel becomes its own meaning. Berger suggested that the text does not retain meaning as such, but rather acts like a death mask—a representation signalling disappearance. Death becomes a form of performance: not a conclusive end, but an ongoing vanishing. It is perpetuated through acts of interpretation. (Interestingly, in English grammar, only one tense can be used per sentence—an ironic parallel.)
Thus, authorship shifts from one performance to another. To persist as a being, the author must continually perform the manifestation of the work. The designer/author gives the content physical presence—speaks it, contextualises it, revives it in the frame, again and again, as a living present.
"The designer’s position lies between technician and artist: the technician gives form to formless material, making form appear in the first place. Plato's objection to both art and technology was that they betray pure, intelligible Ideas when they are transferred into material form. For him, artists and technicians were traitors—tricksters—who seduced the viewer with distorted forms."
— Flusser (1999)
In contemporary life, the designer functions as a bridge between these two roles. The designer manipulates both material and content, yet remains bound by the cultural dictionary. Following Marx’s theory of labour-value, much of today’s mechanically produced output has lost its value due to the absence of human labour. Yet, as Flusser suggests, if anything retains value today, it is design.
From this hypothesis, I argue that authorship arises through being—and being creates the space of being. I refer back to the metaphor of the picture frame, which I explored in my previous research: A Journey of the Picture Frame and the Picture. I identified three primary features of the frame that govern how performance is regulated—almost taxidermically. This “space of stuffing” does not move outward, but inward, defining and confining the form.
So my question is: how can these formations be maintained, and also re-formed into other frames? What happens when two frames merge—or one divides into two or three?
The frame here is not merely a physical border, but the space of perception—the place where visibility is made possible. While physical matter directly shapes perception, in the cyber era, matter itself can no longer be constructed in material terms. Anything can be anything, but equally, anything can be nothing. No one can claim true ownership over the substance of materials—only God or nature. We cannot even trace the origin of the idea of matter.
But this discussion is not about ownership or authorship. It is about the destination of things.
Damisch described perspective as a “structure of exclusion, the coherence of which is based on a set of refusals.” The painter was once immobilised by the logic of the system—and so was the viewer. Today, those boundaries have collapsed. Yet interaction persists.
Can we still distinguish between the two?
Should we?
Or are we forever capturing a continuous act of "deathing"?
References
Flusser, V. (1999) The Shape of Things. London: Reaktion Books.
Friedberg, A. (2006) The Virtual Window. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.