Landscape is an interactive artwork that allows users to physically experience an invisible data terrain. It envisions the physical infrastructure underpinning the ultra-connected cities of today—urban environments driven by connectivity, extreme speed, and hyper-functionality. These cities support everything from global business transactions to densely networked online social cultures.
This work was originally created as part of my Master’s thesis at the Royal College of Art, London, in 1997. Landscape emerged from a research project centered around a vertical core at Oxford Circus in central London. For this site, I gathered every available infrastructural engineering plan—fiber optic cables, electricity, water, roads, underground transit systems, and other hidden tunnels.
I also included ground-level structures such as buildings, traffic lights, and transitional elements like double-decker buses, taxis, and even flight paths overhead. These flight paths carried massive 747s and, at the time, the iconic Concorde en route to Heathrow Airport. People themselves were part of the map.
I deconstructed this information into a series of hand-drawn, flat layers—each one representing a single cross-section of the vertical landscape. These layers were then combined into a continuous "fly-through," taking viewers on a journey from the deepest tunnel beneath Oxford Circus to the skies above, where a 747 soars.
Exhibited 2016 at JIKJI, THE GOLDEN SEED. An immersive exhibition of architecture, art, design, fashion, media and VR, Cheongju Art Centre, South Korea. JIKJI, THE GOLDEN SEED is an exhibition celebrating the world’s first book printed with metal moveable type – or Jikji – and the impact that the printed word has had on the world ever since. It was created in the Korean city of Cheongju in 1377, 77 years before Gutenberg’s famous bible was printed in Germany. With exhibits ranging from 600-year old cultural artefacts to a 360 degree virtual reality film, a controversial “portrait” created on glass from human cells and a ceramic work comprised of thousands of pieces of the word Jikji written in the Hangul (Korean) alphabet, Jikji is interpreted not just as type, but as innovation, and the show demonstrates how important such technological shifts are to human development.