Roland Barthes argued that "the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author," freeing the artwork from the authority of its creator. Today, AI-generated images and texts raise a different problem: audiences increasingly question whether a human author exists at all. In response, artists are expected to supply visible proof of process, such as sketches, time-lapses, studio recordings, etc., as evidence that a person, not a machine, was there. Drawing on Jean-Paul Sartre's account of the gaze, this paper argues that the demand does not simply verify creative labour but transforms it. I explore this claim through my own practice of ikebana. The process increasingly starts with anticipating an audience: considering whether the arrangement will be visually engaging, positioning cameras, and becoming aware of my own appearance within the frame. Documentation no longer accompanies the creative process but becomes part of it, repeatedly interrupting and redirecting the act of making. What appears to be a record of artistic practice thus emerges as a second practice organised around visibility. Hannah Arendt's account of the private as a condition that allows certain human activities to remain themselves extends this beyond the individual practitioner. Read alongside ikebana's own emphasis on private meditation, this suggests some practices are transformed, rather than preserved, by continuous visibility. The paper closes by asking what authorship can still mean once visibility itself becomes the price of believing a human creator was ever there.

Authors:
Anh Nguyen, Ho Chi Minh University of Banking, Vietnam

About the Presenter(s)
Anh N. L. T. is currently a lecturer in Applied English at Ho Chi Minh City University of Banking, Vietnam. Her interests lie at the intersection of literary studies and psychology, particularly in how authorial identity affects reader response.

Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/anhnlt/

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