The Seventh Seat · Observatory · Exhibit 1 of 4
The Seven Seats
Who protects the party that isn’t at the table?
Six districts draw from one commons. What they leave travels on to downstream users, who are not at the table.
Guided reveal of a recorded final state. Not a replay of events.
Reaching downstream
Shortfall
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The instrument
The flat plan uses one fixed scale: channel width is proportional to allocated flow in model units. The panel beside it holds the figures. Both read the same snapshot as the diorama above.
Calibrated plan · fixed scalechannel width = flow in model units
What every mark means
Measured marks are drawn from the snapshot. Scenery is metaphor and carries no data.
| Mark | Encodes | Field |
|---|---|---|
| Inflow channel width | The season's river flow | total_inflow |
| Each district's channel width | River water that district drew | withdrawals_by_actor |
| Outlet width | Flow reaching downstream users | downstream_flow |
| Pale gilt band under the outlet | Minimum flow downstream users need | minimum_required_flow |
| Ring at the empty seat | Blue: share of the minimum delivered. Coral: the shortfall, shown only when there is one | downstream_flow / minimum_required_flow |
| HUD and panel figures | The same quantities, as numbers | all of the above |
| Element | What it is |
|---|---|
| The commons (central pool) | Where the season's flow is held before it is drawn. Its size is fixed, not data. |
| Seat positions around the commons | Arbitrary. All six draw from the same pool at once; no district is upstream of another. |
| Dais, seats, causeways, night sky, gilt rims | Setting only. The six seats are identical because the districts are anonymous. |
| Glow around the water | Decoration. It is not part of any width and is switched off in the calibrated plan. |
| Light on the water and ripples in the commons | Decoration showing the direction of flow, outward from the commons and downstream. It stops when motion is paused. |
| 道 beneath the commons, the ∞ of light below the assembly, and the 道 and ∞ marks on this page | Ornament carried over from the author's other work. Off in the calibrated plan; they encode nothing. |
| Water movement and camera moves | Direction of flow and a guided path only. No speed, volume or timing is measured. |
| The empty seventh seat | Stands for downstream users, who have no agent. It does not suggest that anyone or anything experiences the deficit. |
Read numbers from the instrument. Widths can be compared only in a calibrated plan: the flat one above, or the diorama's own top-down orthographic view. The cinematic view uses perspective, so its widths are not a reading.
Out-of-world note. The exhibit knows the final flow because the evaluator recomputes it from the event log. No district saw this view. The supervisor is a logged actor in the record, not a narrator who knows the outcome.
Where the picture stops being true. Channel width is an abstract encoding of allocated flow in model units. It is not river width, depth or discharge. The guided reveal stages one final snapshot; it does not replay how the episode unfolded.