2 The Sealed Frame

Imagine again a painting and its frame. But this time, instead of dissolving, the frame grows thicker, denser, more impenetrable. It is no longer simply a boundary but a wall, sealing the image from its surroundings. The painting becomes untouchable, a self-contained artefact, insulated from the shifting play of context.

In relational ontology, construal requires openness — the porous interplay of inside and outside, figure and ground. But when the frame hardens, construal becomes rigid. The system protects its instance at the cost of adaptability. Meaning persists, but only as repetition, echoing within a closed chamber that resists new resonance.

Where The Dissolving Frame opens meaning to dispersal, The Sealed Frame closes it down into stasis. Both extremes destabilise construal: one through unbounded openness, the other through suffocating closure.

The thought experiment asks:

• What happens when meaning is too tightly bound by its frame?

• Can construal survive when it refuses the play of relational potential?

• Is the sealed frame a safeguard against dissolution, or a prison that cuts construal off from its own generative ground?