User:Demet Adiguzel/Essay Draft

1. The Impossibility of the Original

Any work of art is built somewhat with an aim, intention, expression of its master. The artist has certain rules in mind to view and poke a certain feeling on the viewer.

In his writings about photography, Roland Barthes state the differences on the things that concerns everyone, general meanings that are visible to anyone – studium and the things that are subjective, personal, concerning its viewer itself particularly – punctum.

If we generalize Barthes’ theory on photography for other art forms and accept the idea that studium and punctum do exist for every art work, it raises the question of what the work really is : a work intended by the artist or an independent, separate entity from its creator which forms its identity by the viewer.

When punctum plays a role in the viewing of a piece, doesn’t that already reproduce the piece in another shape? Conveys it to a form maybe even the creator did not intend at all? It could be taken into account as an undeniable truth that the viewer himself adds and is a value for the work. So the work itself is already becoming a variation, a version of the intended. It brings the paradox that the viewer never experiences the original as (the meaning of) the work vary according to the viewer.

2. Further additions by the viewer and their meaning

(about Laric’s video) (Laura Mulvey’s essay)