TRAVIS — Behind the Data

Last updated: 2026-09-05. This page accompanies the RSD15 "Data in Relation" exhibition (Turin, October 2026). It will be extended before and during the exhibition — treat this as a working snapshot, not a final record.

What this map is

One question — why can't this society pause? — read across five levels: psychological, cognitive, organisational, institutional, civilisational. The exhibited structure ("A Society That Can Pause", exhibition edition) holds 29 variables, 53 directed relations, and 5 reinforcing loops, one per level. It was built from meeting records, field notes and workshop conversation from an ongoing transition design project in Japan.

Thirteen of the 53 relations cross between loops — the map is as much about how the five loops hold one another as about what happens inside each one. R3 (Organisational Acceleration) and R4 (Growth-Dependent System) reinforce each other in both directions; R5 (Directional Loss) feeds into three of the other four loops.

A concrete sample: loop R1

To make the abstraction visible, here is one loop in full — not a summary, the actual node and edge set:

Node	English	Role
R1A	Anxiety & Feeling of Inadequacy	loop entry
R1B	Consumption & Spending
R1C	Work Harder
R1D	Loss of Wonder
R1H	Present Richness Goes Unnoticed
R1I	Consumed, Still Empty
EP1	Loss of Inner Fulfillment	loop endpoint

Edges: R1A→R1B→R1C→CORE, CORE→R1D→R1A (closing the reinforcing cycle), CORE→R1H→R1I→EP1→R1A. Every edge in this map carries a + polarity — a representational choice, explained below, not an absence of counteracting dynamics in the underlying inquiry.

How the structure is built

The division of labour between code and language model is fixed, not negotiated at run time.

Cycle detection, polarity resolution and loop membership are computed deterministically by code. The model is never asked what the structure is.
The model receives small, scoped questions and must answer by index into a list the code has already numbered — it cannot name an element that doesn't exist.
A claim is kept only if the quotation supporting it is found verbatim in its source. If it isn't, the claim is demoted to silence rather than kept.
When a second contributor speaks about a relation that already exists, the earlier assertion is not overwritten — assertions accumulate, and where two point in opposite directions, the code marks the relation as disputed rather than resolving it in either direction.

How the reading is guided

The exhibited map ships with a seven-step reading path (story_steps), each holding one loop or the core at a time. The first two steps, verbatim:

1. THE QUESTION — "Why can't this society pause?"

We started with one question. What we found was not a single cause — but a system of five mutually reinforcing loops that keep each other, and us, in perpetual motion.