3 Reflection: Vanishing Point & Shimmering Edge

Both experiments explore the tension between presence and absence in relational construal.

1. The Vanishing Point emphasises an absent centre: meaning is organised around something structurally necessary yet unreachable. The horizon guides action and coherence, but cannot itself be grasped. This highlights how systems rely on inferred structures — the scaffolding of possibility that is never fully actualised.

2. The Shimmering Edge emphasises unstable boundaries: the limits of a system appear fixed from afar, but dissolve into fractal complexity on closer inspection. Meaning is bounded, but these bounds are always provisional, generated by the system’s scale of construal rather than a priori limits.

Together, they reveal:

• Coherence in a system of meaning arises not from total presence or finality, but from the interplay of what is absent and what is only partially delineated.

• Horizons and edges act as relational anchors — guiding construal without being fully contained within it.

• Stability is emergent and perspectival: it depends simultaneously on the invisible vanishing point and the endlessly shifting edge.

In short, these two experiments illuminate how absence and flux are constitutive of meaning itself, showing that relational systems cohere precisely because they are shaped by what is not fully actualised or fully fixed.