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Research tool record. This page documents the tool and its method. The interactive application is not embedded, and this page does not accept material for analysis.

Summary ↓ · Procedure ↓ · Worked example ↓ · Citation ↓

Record at a glance

• Purpose: Compare how critical approaches select evidence and move from observation to a claim.
• Responsibility: Dorian Vale; maintained by Museum of One.
• Tool version: No numbered tool release is specified in the public record.
• Method reference: Framework comparison; the documented prototype used Gemini 2.5 Flash. A model designation is not a tool-release number.
• Research status: Experimental teaching instrument; prototype documented.
• Documentation revised: 17 October 2026. This dates the record, not a new tool release.

Evidence status: Assisted accounts must be checked against the object, sources, and framework texts. This record reports no comparative accuracy evaluation.

Theory Prism is a pedagogical research instrument for comparing the conduct of critical frameworks. A single image or object becomes the point of reference for several approaches. The object of comparison is the account each approach produces: what it attends to, what it assumes, what it excludes, and what kind of authority it claims.

What it does

Rather than presenting several interpretations as interchangeable answers, the documented design makes their procedures available for inspection. It asks how a framework moves from a visible feature to a claim and which premises make that move possible. Differences between accounts can then be examined at the level of method rather than reduced to preference.

• Compare points of attention: identify the features each approach brings forward and those it leaves peripheral.
• Locate inference: distinguish observations about the image from claims that require contextual evidence or theoretical premises.
• Examine refusal: ask what an approach cannot establish and whether that limit changes its account.

Procedure at a glance

Worked example

Illustration only. This constructed example is not a software run, validation result, or report of participant findings.

Constructed object: a white card bears a blue circle near its lower edge. No title, provenance, or artist statement is supplied.

• Descriptive account: A blue circle sits near the lower edge of a white card. This attends to colour and position but cannot claim to describe every relevant feature.
• Interpretive proposition: The circle represents isolation is a possible reading, not an observation. Identify the premise and evidence that would support it before assigning the claim to a named school.
• Post-interpretive check: Withhold the asserted meaning where support is missing, while acknowledging that choosing colour and position is itself selective. Witness Mode is not a view without decisions.

What this establishes: Compare the moves made by these illustrative accounts, not their supposed fidelity to entire traditions. A framework-specific study would need representative primary texts and a fuller object record.

Witness mode

The original design includes a post-interpretive Witness Mode. Its task is to restrain meaning-assignment and attend to what can be described without claiming to resolve the work. Witness Mode is not a neutral view outside all frameworks. Its selection of features and its language remain decisions that require examination.

Why it belongs to Post-Interpretive Criticism

PIC is concerned with the authority exercised by an account over a work and its encounter. Theory Prism makes that exercise visible across methods, including PIC itself. Its value lies in showing where a reading earns its claims and where a framework supplies an answer before the work or the evidence can resist it.

Scope and limits

The documented prototype used Gemini 2.5 Flash for assisted visual reasoning. An instruction to flag inference does not guarantee that every inference will be identified or that an account will be accurate. A generated comparison is not an authoritative representation of a school of thought. It must be checked against the image, relevant sources, and the actual texts of the framework under discussion.

Related research

Linguistic Diagnostics Analysis examines rhetorical posture within critical writing. Phenomenological Methods and Diagnostic Reading provides the programme context for questions about observation, inference, and revision.

Citation and revision

Suggested citation. Select and copy the following text:

Vale, Dorian. Theory Prism - Critical Analysis Framework Visualizer. Museum of One, 2026. Research tool record; documentation revised 17 October 2026. https://www.museumofone.art/theory-prism/

Methodological reference: Post-Interpretive Method. This supplies ethical and methodological context, not evidence that this instrument has been validated.

Revision note · 17 October 2026. Added the record summary, procedure diagram, constructed example, evidence-status distinction, and suggested citation. This is a documentation revision. No new software release, participant findings, or validation result is announced.

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