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The dissertation tests whether Soviet-era talking points on famine commemoration transform predictably when they cross register boundaries - secret memo → embassy/Novosti → domestic news → diaspora/scholarly print - and whether that transformation is dated and measurable (Montreal 1983 as anchor, post-1983 explosion as qualitative rewire). These 3D models make Lotman’s spatial vocabulary falsifiable: they read from the same open JSON as Figures 1-12.
L1 empirical is intentionally sparse - 13 surfaces, empty autocommunication shell, five traced relay arcs (2 proven thematic, 1 verbatim outward packet, 2 Farisei-tier memo-claim links - mixed proof tiers in JSON). This demo fabricates companions the dissertation will ingest later: shell-2 autocommunication loops (purple), silence voids on Pravda/Izvestiia, cross-semiosphere dialogue spr. 1206 ↔ CIUS 1986 (violet), tier-A Globe clip, exile broadcast, MFA circular. It is a target state for the spatial model, not a count from files.
Supervisors and readers need to see what Lotman’s vocabulary looks like when populated - otherwise the pilot looks like a few dots and lines. The demo answers: “If the checklist succeeds, what shape does the evidence take?” Every fabricated arc still uses the same relay-type logic and click-panel fields (what it tells us / what it does not prove / thesis significance) so the interpretive habit transfers to L1 when new companions arrive.
In this visualization, a connection is not a vague “link.” It is a pair-read adjudication stored in JSON: two text surfaces share a topic (famine, symposium, gathering) and we document how wording travels - or refuses to travel - between them. An arc therefore encodes an evidentiary claim with a proof tier (proven thematic relay, proven verbatim, memo-claim only, and so on).
What connections tell us collectively: (1) Internal hostility (сборище, scare quotes) stays on the inner shell and does not relay to embassy, Novosti, or UN - 0 scare-quote operator hits on those Soviet-outward surfaces in the register-relay matrix (48 internal hits across three memos). (2) Outward Soviet lines share denial frames (drought, kulak sabotage, no artificial famine) across embassy and agency. (3) Rival and diaspora surfaces carry commemorative language the outward line rejects. (4) Domestic Soviet newsprint in 1983 is largely silent on Holodomor denial - shown as absence of arcs on the newspaper shell; tier-B tracks may show incidental quote-mark matches (1933 baseline idiom), not denial relay. Together, arcs sketch a governed split narrative, not one story told louder or softer.
What a missing arc also means: No line between spr. 1206 and Pravda is itself evidence - denial routed abroad, not through verified domestic clips in the anniversary window. The model is honest about silence and pending tiers.
Try it: click the violet spr. 1206 ↔ CIUS 1986 arc - dialogue of texts at the semiosphere edge. Then click an autocommunication purple arc on shell 2 - inward loop before outward pedagogy. Toggle Hide panel for an unobstructed view.
This is a made-up target picture. The panels say how it is drawn and what in it is invented.
The demo uses the same shells as L1: radius by register, from secret memos at the centre to rival print at the edge. The difference is placement within a shell. In L1 a spacing rule spreads the documents out. Here every document, real or invented, has a position typed into the page's data (its x, y and z), chosen to make the full structure easy to read.
Arcs bow outward exactly as in L1, and their colours follow the same relay types. The click panels use the same fields: what the connection tells us, what it does not prove, and why it matters. The arcs for autocommunication loops, silences, the dialogue with CIUS 1986, a tier-A Globe clip, an exile broadcast and an MFA circular are fabricated. Nothing on this page is counted from a file.
Nothing in the data moves. Turn the model spins the spheres slowly so the invented layers can be seen from every side.
Generated in the thesis lab by build_lotman_3d_visualizations.py in demo mode and copied here on sync. This section is kept in explain/fig-lotman-semiosphere-demo-3d.html in the site repo and added back on every sync.
An imagined, complete version of the Montreal semiosphere. The real pilot has only thirteen documents and five connections, so it looks sparse. This version fills every layer with the kinds of documents the dissertation expects to find: internal reports where the system talks to itself (purple loops), domestic newspapers that stay silent, an exchange with a 1986 text from the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, CIUS (violet), and exile radio.
Only what a finished picture would look like if the archive work succeeds. It shows no evidence.
Readers and supervisors need to see the shape the argument is aiming for, or the pilot reads as a few dots and lines. Because the demo uses the same colours and click panels as the real figure, learning to read it here carries over to L1 as real documents arrive. Never cite it as evidence. Once real documents fill it, the full picture would let the project test Lotman's claim that a culture begins by dividing the world into its own space and theirs.
As a teaching aid it works. As evidence it is worth nothing, and it should never end up on a slide where it could be mistaken for results. Its real use is as a checklist: every fabricated element names a kind of document the archive work still has to find. When one turns up, it moves from this page to L1 with a real tier.