The Visible Landscape Workshop demo defines an information landscape as a “space that allows you to peruse information by navigating in and out”. Here, the conventional mental model of reading as linear processing is challenged, creating a dynamic interface of type. Similarly to Christopher Alexander’s patterns, wherein public areas are at the forefront of a buildings’ circulation and become progressively more private, broad concepts are first revealed to the user which can then be further investigated.
In regards to current AR and VR technology, I found it interesting that the lab had decided to choose text as their subject matter for the landscape. This is primarily because linear processing is a requirement to read and understand material, although it could be argued that a more efficient method of reading would be to jump to relevant sections of a text. Observing the nodes of a corporation in the demonstration, there are concepts of making the abstract tangible in the Visible Landscape Workshop that have been expanded upon in AR/VR. Immersive technology allows the user to experience visual stimuli that would otherwise be implausible under constraints of time or space. In the same way, text that had been visible only on two-dimensional surfaces may be engaged with in a three-dimensional space, an experience that is imposssible in physical reality.
