1 The Dissolving Frame

Imagine a painting that only exists because of its frame. The frame doesn’t simply contain it; it shapes how the canvas is perceived — where it begins, where it ends, what is inside and what is outside. Now imagine the frame begins to dissolve. First one corner melts, then the edges blur, until there is no longer a clear boundary between painting and wall, figure and ground.

In relational ontology, construal always operates within frames: horizons of relevance, contexts that delimit the play of meaning. A frame is not an external scaffolding but an enacted cut — a perspectival boundary that distinguishes “this meaning here” from “all that remains outside it.”

But what happens when the frame itself falters? When context can no longer stabilise the construal, meaning disperses into unbounded potential. The painting leaks into the wall, the canvas bleeds into space, and what was once a coherent instance becomes an undifferentiated field of possibility.

This is not pure chaos — rather, it is the exposure of construal to its own groundlessness. The frame dissolves, and with it, the illusion of separateness. The system is no longer a discrete instance but a shimmering threshold where actuality fades back into potential.

The thought experiment asks:

• What becomes of meaning when its frame collapses?

• Can construal persist without the boundaries that stabilise it?

• Is the dissolution of the frame a loss of order, or an opening to deeper, more fluid forms of relational possibility?