Set up once. Then two activities — transcribing and visualizing — that feed each other. Like a shuttle in the weaver's hand, the work goes back and forth: what you find in the network changes how you read the page, and each new reading changes the network.
Reading the pages builds the network — and the network changes how the pages are read. A name identified in a letter held elsewhere can settle an unclear word in yours. A corrected reading can move a letter to a different date, or a different place. So the work never runs only one way: every new reading is checked against the connections, and every new connection is checked against the pages.
Collatorium works like brocade. The archive is the warp, the grounding everything is woven through. Archives change — they grow, are reordered, and decay — so each photograph is kept as a dated record of the page as it was, and Collatorium never alters it. One AI model lays the ground; others add weft only where a reading needs it; people choose the pattern. Turn the cloth over and the back shows how every thread was placed — that is the record. The AI is an instrument, like the shuttle in a weaver's hand: it carries the work further, and does not replace the hand. More on the inspiration →