The Lattice · The Chambers
One dataset. Seven instruments. One transform.
The Lattice shows the same 1,600+ handshakes through seven lenses. None is a dashboard. Each is a way of asking the data a different question: where, between whom, when, in what pattern, in what key, in what absence, and in what order. An eighth chamber — Brass — reads nothing: it is permission to bend the melody itself.
01Sphere — the globe
The home lens. Every handshake is a pulse on a slowly turning sphere where latitude is time — 2000 BCE at the deep south, the present year 2026 at the equator, 2200 CE at the far north — and longitude is domain, eight meridians for eight kinds of contact. Past pulses burn warm; the future shimmers cool and uncertain; near-misses are grey ghosts. Hover to read a handshake, click to open it. Click a domain label to isolate its meridian; scrub the time filter to cut the lattice at any year.
←→ cycle pulses · Enter open · 123 zoom cosmic/regional/intimate
02Chord — the grammar
The eight domains sit on a rotating ring, and ribbons arc between them wherever handshakes bind one kind of contact to another — where exchange leans on alliance, where farewell touches intimacy. The ring turns on its own and slows under your cursor, the way a conversation slows when you lean in.
03River — the history
Time runs left to right; the eight domains run as lanes; density braids where centuries crowd with contact. The river is where the shape of history is most legible — the long quiet stretches, the sudden confluences.
←→ scrub ±50 years · Shift ×10
04Rhyme — the pattern
History does not repeat, but it rhymes. This lens finds handshakes with the same structure in different centuries — a treaty here, a treaty there, two strangers meeting at a crossing three hundred years apart — and places them side by side so the rhyme is visible.
05Song — the melody
The lattice, set to music. A library of 86 original tracks, tuned to 432 Hz, drives an audio-reactive body — a displaced, ember-lit orb that swells with the low bands and sharpens with the high ones, with a 2D waveform as its fallback. Choosing a track is its own small scene: the library orbits the orb as a slow ring of nodes — hover to name one, click to play it, or filter the ring to a single naming family — or flip to a plain searchable list. A full player travels with you: seek waveform, live BPM and mood, shuffle and repeat.
Space play/pause · N next · P previous · S shuffle · R repeat
06Undefined — the permission
The chamber of handshakes that never happened: the letter unsent, the meeting missed by a day, the alliance that dissolved before the signing. Phantom handshakes flicker in and out. If one of them should have existed, you may burn it into the lattice — it stays, in your browser, as a scar of ember.
07Index — the navigation
The seventh chamber is deliberately plain: every handshake as a flat, searchable list — year, parties, domain, kind. It is the text-first path through the lattice, the one that asks nothing of your eyes but reading. Filter as you type; click a row to open it.
08Brass — the transform
The seven lenses read the lattice; Brass lets a band walk in beside the song. Engage the chamber and the track keeps playing untouched while two sections join it: a trumpet line voiced from the song itself — brass-filtered, chorused, leaning into every beat — and a marching drum line, boom on the downbeat, snare answering, locked to the track's own pulse. Five knobs: hero (the trumpets), power (the drums), pauses (the band rests, the song carries on), density (section thickness), stadium (the room). The chamber reads each track's own band DNA (energy curve, hero moments, hit points — derived locally from the waveform; nothing leaves your browser) and can play the knobs for you in auto·read, or record your hands as the score in auto·write. Three finales: mighty gracious, sudden stop, fade out. Bypass is the default, and the 432 Hz tuning survives the chamber.
··Everywhere
Press ⌘K (or Ctrl+K) in any lens to search all handshakes. F toggles fullscreen; E exports the current lens as a PNG. Views are shareable: ?lens= holds your lens and ?h= holds an open handshake. The full keyboard map lives on the accessibility page.