F14 Individual Work
This class comprises works that are realised by one and only one self-contained expression, i.e., works representing the concept as expressed by precisely this expression.
Inherent to the notion of work is the completion of recognisable outcomes of the work. These outcomes, i.e. the Self-Contained Expressions, are regarded as the symbolic equivalents of Individual Works, which form the atoms of a complex work. Normally creators would characterise an outcome of a work as finished. In other cases, one could recognise an outcome of a work as complete from the elaboration or logical coherence of its content, or if there is any historical knowledge about the creator deliberately or accidentally never finishing (completing) that particular expression. In all those cases, one would regard the corresponding expression as equivalent to one Individual Work.
Abstract content of Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s ‘Carcere XVI: the pier with chains: 1st state’
Abstract content of Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s ‘Carcere XVI: the pier with chains: 2nd state’ [explanation: these are two states of the same etching, but with so many and so significant differences between them that they can scarcely be recognised as conveying the same work; more generally speaking, each individual state of an etching, as a Self-Contained Expression, conveys its own F14 Individual Work (even if the differences are not so blatant as in the case of ‘Carcere XVI’), and is regarded as part of the larger, abstract F15 Complex Work that encompasses all distinct states of the same etching]
Abstract content of the recording made of performances of Johann Sebastian Bach’s ‘Toccata in C minor BWV 911’ by Glenn Gould on May 15 & 16, 1979, in Toronto, Eaton’s Auditorium