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Didn't understand 6d but now do, didn't think about looking for separate plural Def, thanks drxx.

Decent enough if somewhat uninspiring. I'm in the 8 bits of artwork camp, although can see why the confusion. I think the pairs and their positioning are just referring to what Mr left column did, rather than the well known phrase.

Great puzzle. Quite demanding, thought several times I'd fail to complete but after much (enjoyable) time spent, finally done.
I think 8 identical additions are required.

Came back to this after a help out visit to the mother-in-law who is, understandably, struggling with online banking etc. Straight away saw that I had put a couple of correct letters in the instruction which then made sense. I agree with the “eight artwork” camp. Thank you, Karla - and I enjoyed the title as well as the puzzle!

A mother-in-law (or actually any family member) who can help with The Listener sounds wonderful.

Ok, Lumen, I put my hands up and you may formally claim a wholly deserved “Gotcha!”. The ambiguity in my post had completely escaped me!

@Quixote 55 -

The reference to pairs had me confused too, but seems only to relate to the placement of the entries in the grid

I think there is something thematic in how the pairs are presented.
There's a uniform element to one half of each of the three pairs, and the set of four can be split 50/50 too (but in a different way). Wouldn't this fit with the theme, as suggested by the interpretation of the puzzle's title mentioned earlier?

Allbarone, Drxx -
sorry, but I can't make any kind of pairs out of the 14 answers as specified in the first two sentences of the preamble.

Six of them are qualifiers for varieties of the pivotal subject;
Eight of them contain the pivotal subject.

So they're all undeniably thematic individually, and in two different ways.

- but I really can't see any way that any combinations of these whole words make meaningful "...thematically linked pairs, four pairs being thematic in one way and three in another."

I'm afraid your explanations don't cast any light on this at all for me.

Maybe I'm being characteristically dense, and can expect a Damascene flash of revelation when the result and (I hope) explanation is published in two weeks time - but as far as I can see the mysterious 'pairing' of these 14 words doesn't contribute anything to the solution of the grid, or to the instructions for the 'artworks' - so perhaps I shouldn't care.

Niggling me, though...

In the puzzle title the things that X have certain characteristics - four in all (according to the wiki page) with each having 2 variations, but only two of the four characteristics are observable at this stage. These relate to the 'artwork' we're to add and what is already apparent in the set of three - because 3 of the examples are of a uniform...
I won't try to explain this any further, because it risks becoming another one of those exchanges that tend to drag on. And, as there's a scientific basis to this puzzle, I imagine you understand the process better than I ever will (if you don't see it, perhaps it isn't there, but I've got my crayons out).

One final thing - my 8 'uniform' artworks, were never 'identical', just uniform in shape (I should have made that clear earlier).