A COLLECTION OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTS
35 ways for an idea to arrive.
Not thirty-five containers. Thirty-five answers to the question that comes before shape: what is this interface doing?
ROOM I · 12 FORMS
STATEMENTS
THE READER READS
Assertions, observations, evidence and questions. The idea holds still; language carries it.
ENTER THE FULL EXHIBITION →Hero
The room's first wall: kicker, headline, dek.
Statement
One sentence, given the whole width.
Observation
A labelled paragraph that watches rather than argues.
Claim
An assertion that knows it must answer to evidence.
Evidence
Rows of labelled findings with status marks — receipts, not decoration.
Question
An open question given the same typographic dignity as an answer.
Timeline
Dated entries, in order — history as prose, not a widget.
Connection
A bridge out of the chapter: one sentence, then the doors.
Refusal
Fail-closed rendered as design language, not as an error state.
Excerpt
Someone else's words, typeset — verbatim source material with its markdown rendered and its trims marked.
Answer
The question asked the way people ask it, answered first — one lift-able paragraph beneath the editorial surface, addressable by anchor.
Snippet
A labeled block of code or terminal output, verbatim on the ink — the on-ramp form, promoted when two sites needed the same shape.
ROOM II · 15 FORMS
INSTRUMENTS
THE READER OPERATES
Comparisons, lenses and structures. Meaning appears through a choice the reader makes.
ENTER THE FULL EXHIBITION →Anatomy
An annotated cutaway — one artifact drawn as its layers, fully disclosed.
Decomposition
One object, its parts, the thing that assembles them — stepped by hand.
ExpertField
A field of units, mostly dormant; each scenario lights the subset that answers.
Comparison
One object, two interpretations, dragged between.
Variants
Physically present variants of one identity — and a designed refusal for the absent one.
Ladder
A gated progression — rungs climbed in order, each closed only by its own criterion.
Agreement
N independently-derived values that must be identical — with a FAIL row.
Derivation
A value folded down a graded scale by caps — derived, never asserted.
ByteMap
A physical layout drawn to scale — each field's width is its width in bytes.
FollowReveal
A path through connected ideas, replayed at the hause stagger.
Terminal
A query surface whose chrome is the form and whose meaning is one executor.
Gating
A stream widened into a working space, judged channel by channel, brought back home.
Provenance
The publication record beneath the page — dates, version, identifiers, history — disclosed on demand, absent where nothing is registered.
Lens
One concept at several depths — the explanation, the object, the clause — on one URL, with the reader's depth remembered.
Citation
The reference itself, in the formats people paste — plain, BibTeX, APA, CSL-JSON, all from one record.
ROOM III · 8 FORMS
PERFORMANCES
THE FORMS PLAY THEMSELVES
Transformation, procession and magnitude. Time and movement become part of the explanation.
ENTER THE FULL EXHIBITION →Transformation
Comparison's cinematic sibling — identical props, performed.
Unfolding
Decomposition's cinematic sibling — the parts arrive on their own.
Compilation
A pile of inputs compiled down through named stages.
Procession
One thing passing through every stage, in order.
Magnitude
A powers-of-ten zoom-out — each arrival rescales the world.
Channel
Throughput through a fixed-capacity conduit.
Quantisation
What quantisation actually does, performed on a lattice.
Film
A short film in the flow of a chapter — poster until it earns the play.
THE AUDIT
Every row above is read from manifest.ts in the library itself — the same file the homepage's count, the Terminal specimen's SHOW FORMS, and the README answer to. A form marked held-not-yet-exhibited is in the library without a specimen, and the book says so rather than faking one: a Film specimen waits for a real film.
The on-ramp is deliberately separate from the exhibition.