A conservator restores a painting while preserving visible traces of earlier compositional decisions beneath the surface: a shifted arm, an erased figure or a repainted background. Technical imaging records each stage rather than presenting a single final image. The painting becomes a readable sequence of decisions instead of a closed object. This is StratumAuthoring because the present remains legible only through the traceability of its underlying layers. Unlike SemanticHardening, no single term performs the binding; the dependency runs through the physical record itself. Test it by erasing the record of one layer. If a later restoration choice can no longer be explained or justified, that layer was structurally active.
StratumAuthoring:
https://socioplastics.blogspot.com/2026/05/socioplastics-504-stratum-authoring.html
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18680935