Case File No. 083 · Andrius K.

SUBJECT:: ANDRIUS K.
ALIAS:: HEADBAND NO. 2

EXHIBIT G - TREES (OPEN)

The woods above Verbier, grown on the visitor's own machine. Four kinds, four seasons, up to 685 000 trees on one slope. Nothing is kept on file.
EXHIBIT F - TYRINEJIMAI.LT (OPEN)

The page of a firm of surveyors in Klaipeda. One file, nothing fetched from outside. The plans on it are samples and say so. The map is not.
EXHIBIT E - FRANÇAIS (OPEN)

A trainer for the subject's French lessons. Four courses, 598 words, fifty questions a lesson or more. The page keeps the hour of the Côte d'Azur. Behind a password.
EXHIBIT D - VERTIMAI (OPEN)

Seven machines translate the same book. Invited readers rate them blind. Admission by invitation.
EXHIBIT C - LAIVAVEDYS (OPEN)

A trainer for the skipper's examination. 1132 questions, 365 with pictures. The subject intends to take to the water. Behind a password.
EXHIBIT B - VERBIER (OPEN)

The subject's known whereabouts, winter and summer. The ground is the federal survey. Surveillance continues.
EXHIBIT A - FRACTAL LANDSCAPE (REOPENED)

Written in C++ in 2004. Recovered and rebuilt for the browser. The arithmetic is unchanged. The mountains are not real.

EXHIBIT G · OPEN

Trees

One Norway spruce, standing by itself on a lawn — Fig. 1. Specimen No. 1. Norway spruce, 25,3 m.

FINDINGS:

A study of the woods above Verbier. Norway spruce, European larch, Arolla pine and silver birch, each grown from a number and a set of rules when it is asked for. The same number gives the same tree. No tree is kept on file.

A wood on a slope in autumn: stands of dark spruce, stands of golden larch, clearings between them — Fig. 2. A stand in autumn. The larch has turned.

HOW IT IS WORKED:

A few specimens are photographed from sixty-four sides and stood on a slope many times over, a tree to a card, then a clump to a card. The wood can be made some seven kilometres across. Parts of it are one kind alone, parts are mixed. The sun and the distance are the visitor's to set.

The same wood in winter: snow on the ground and on the spruce, the larch bare — Fig. 3. The same stand in winter. The larch stands bare.

MOTIVE:

The subject photographed these woods and was not satisfied with a drawing of them. The trees found fit were moved to Exhibit B, where they now stand on the real ground. The study remains open.

Inspect the specimens

EXHIBIT F · OPEN

Tyrinejimai.lt

The head of the page: the firm's name, a heading in Lithuanian and a measured plot drawn over contour lines — Fig. 1. The head of the page. A plot of 0,2031 ha, measured.

FINDINGS:

The page of a firm of surveyors in Klaipeda, on the Lithuanian coast: what they measure, a set of plan sheets, the largest objects they have surveyed, where to find them. It speaks Lithuanian. It keeps a light and a dark side.

A topographic plan at 1:500: a fenced plot with two buildings, spot heights, and water, sewer, gas and power lines along the street — Fig. 2. A topographic plan, 1:500. A sample; the street does not exist.

HOW IT IS WORKED:

One file of 167 KB. No fonts, no framework, nothing fetched from anywhere else. The eight plan sheets are not scans: a script draws them, and the numbers on a sheet are worked out from its own coordinates. Each is marked as an illustration. A click enlarges it.

A map of western Lithuania from the sea to Šiauliai, with six numbered objects, a dashed oil pipeline and a dashed gas pipeline — Fig. 3. Six objects, from the port to the pipelines.

The map is drawn the same way, from OpenStreetMap, in the national grid (LKS-94). The towns stand where they stand.

MOTIVE:

The readers are surveyors. They would notice a coordinate out of place. None has been reported.

Call on the firm

EXHIBIT E · OPEN

Français

The trainer's mark: a sun the colour of a baguette going down behind three blue waves — Fig. 1. The mark on the telephone: a sun over the water.

FINDINGS:

A trainer for the French the subject is taught in Geneva. Four courses in 31 lessons, 598 words, each explained in English and in Lithuanian. No lesson holds fewer than fifty questions.

The first page: two questions to repeat today, four ways to practise, and the lessons of the course — Fig. 2, 3. What is due today, and a wrong answer explained.

A wrong answer explained: the answer given, the right one, a note to remember it by, and the word in a sentence — Fig. 2, 3. What is due today, and a wrong answer explained.

HOW IT IS WORKED:

Kept behind a password. A course is picked and fetched once, then stays on the telephone and works without a signal. There are four ways to practise: mixed questions, cards turned over, the word written out, the word heard. A wrong answer is explained at once: what was meant, why, and the word in a sentence. Whatever was answered comes back, a miss the same day, a hit after a day, then three, then a week.

The same page six times, from near black through pale and bright blue to dusk and night — Fig. 4. The same page at 3, 8, 12.30, 16, 19.30 and 22.30.

The page keeps the hour. Its colours follow the sun over Nice: pale at breakfast, brightest at lunch, blue at dusk, near black after midnight.

MOTIVE:

The subject lives among French speakers and is tired of pointing.

EXHIBIT D · OPEN

Vertimai

The first page: what good, acceptable and bad mean, and the four ways to read — Fig. 1. The rules of the room.

FINDINGS:

A reading room for machine translations. Five passages of one book, each put into Lithuanian by seven language models. The translations are filed under the letters A to G. The names of the machines are withheld.

The original beside translations A and B, paragraph by paragraph, each with good, acceptable and bad; the text is blurred — Fig. 2. The original and two suspects, side by side.

HOW IT IS WORKED:

Admission is by invitation: a reader signs in with the email address the subject has on his list. The reader goes through a passage paragraph by paragraph and marks each version good, acceptable or bad, with a note if something jars. The keys G, T and B do the marking. The room speaks Lithuanian.

All seven translations under each paragraph of the original; the text is blurred — Fig. 3. All seven under the original.

There are four ways to read: the original beside one translation, several translations side by side, all of them under the original, or one translation alone, like a book. The book's text is blurred in these photographs; it is not the subject's to show.

The rating page in its dark theme — Fig. 4. The same room after dark.

MOTIVE:

The subject is looking for the best translator and does not trust his own eye. The readers rate blind, so no machine gets by on its name.

EXHIBIT C · OPEN

Laivavedys

The first page on a pale photograph of a mast and sails: a button to start an examination, four counters, the list of subjects — Fig. 1, 2. The first page, and a question on lights.

A question on the lights of a ship: two red lights one above the other and a third below, and three answers — Fig. 1, 2. The first page, and a question on lights.

FINDINGS:

A trainer for the Lithuanian skipper's examination (motorinio pramoginio laivo laivavedys). 1132 questions in fourteen subjects, 365 of them with pictures: lights, buoys, flags, the rules of the road. 369 come from the course's own bank; the rest were written to cover the chapters that bank passes over.

The same question answered wrongly: the right answer ringed in green, the chosen one in red, and the rule it rests on — Fig. 3, 4. A wrong answer corrected, and the reason given.

The explanation of that answer: what the picture shows, why, and the passage of the rules with the words that matter marked — Fig. 3, 4. A wrong answer corrected, and the reason given.

HOW IT IS WORKED:

Kept behind a password. Inside there is an examination drawn from the course bank, 50 questions unless set otherwise, a quick round of 10, a round of past mistakes, a round of what is due to be repeated, and the fourteen subjects one by one, with a switch for picture questions only. Every answer is marked at once. A wrong one is explained: the passage of the rules or of the course notes it rests on, with the words that matter marked, and a line to remember it by. Built for the telephone; once opened it goes on working without a signal, and the record of answers is kept on the server as well.

The opening: a photograph of a mast and sails seen from the deck, the name of the trainer set low on it — Fig. 5, 6. The opening, and a right answer.

A right answer: the same photograph under a green wash, with a tick — Fig. 5, 6. The opening, and a right answer.

HOW IT WAS DRESSED:

It worked, and looked like any other quiz. One picture was brought in, so that it is less of a form and the reason for all the study stays in view: a mast, after the cover of Aloyzas Každailis's Laivai ir jūrininkai. The trainer opens on it; the picture then pales into the paper and lies under every page, and the cards sit on top. A right answer lets it through again for a second. The full account is filed separately, below.

A drawing from the question bank: a compass with its needle to the north-west — Fig. 7. From the question bank: a bearing.

MOTIVE:

The subject intends to take to the water and would rather not be stopped at the examination.

Go to the door Read how it was dressed

EXHIBIT B · OPEN

Verbier

The ridge above Verbier in summer, with the names of the peaks and the numbered lifts — Fig. 1. The ridge in summer. Peaks named, lifts numbered.

FINDINGS:

The real ground around Verbier, in the Swiss Alps, drawn in three dimensions from the federal survey, from the valley floor to Mont Fort. The aerial photograph is laid over it. Houses, roads, single trees, lifts, pistes and mountain restaurants stand where they stand. Four seasons. The sun is where it really is at that hour.

The mountains above Verbier under snow — Fig. 2. The same ground in winter.

HOW IT IS WORKED:

Drag to look around; the wheel moves closer; the keys fly. A click on a lift or a piste opens its file. The search, marked Wanted, finds anything with a name. The address follows the view, so a view can be passed to an accomplice.

The Rhone valley in autumn, seen from above — Fig. 3. The Rhone valley in autumn.

MOTIVE:

A place, not a model. The subject is seen there in winter and in summer. People and the live state of the lifts are still to be entered. Surveillance continues.

Enter the scene

EXHIBIT A · REOPENED

Fractal Landscape

The 2005 terrain as an island under its sea and sky — Fig. 1. The 2005 terrain, as an island.

FINDINGS:

A terrain generator the subject wrote in C++ and OpenGL in 2004, recovered and rebuilt for the browser statement by statement, so a seed gives the shape it gave then. Three subjects: a landscape, a planet, and the terrain he finished for a thesis in 2005, with its own textures, shadows, sky and water.

The 2004 landscape in its own colours, with the program's menu beside it — Fig. 2. The 2004 landscape and the program's own menu.

HOW IT IS WORKED:

Drag to turn it. Scroll or pinch to move closer. The menu is the program's own, in its original wording: pick a subject, generate with a new seed. What was added on reopening is filed under Addendum.

The fractal planet, a grey sphere — Fig. 3. The planet. Also not real.

MOTIVE:

To see whether twenty-year-old arithmetic still stands up. It does. The mountains are not real.

Enter the scene

TUNING

typed while you watch landscape under the sheet red pencil

LANDSCAPE moving lines pace mountains rise begins middle line strength

SUN across height size strength colour rays ray length rays a line glow glow spread glow at the sun glow far off