Project overview
Some artforms, e.g. paintings, have a single instance, and the painting just is this instance. Others, e.g. plays, have many instances, and the play is not itself any of these instances. One tradition treats such repeatable artworks (RAs) as unstructured, eternal objects, outside the causal nexus, and discovered by artists. My project, instead, is to argue that RAs are created by addressing head-on four problems such a view faces: 1) Why can some RAs be forged, but others not? 2) What grounds the identity and existence of RAs; how are they related to the material world? 3) How do RAs change; what is the relation between an RA and its different versions? 4) Can we account for an RAs structure; what is it for a line to occur twice in a poem? Given the focus on broader metaphysical themes, such as identity, change, and structure, the project has implications for general metaphysics. It will also be of interest to musicologists and literary scholars. My research results will be communicated through four journal articles, a conference, teaching, blog posts, and a public 'Cultural Day'.
