Exploring electronic landscapes: Technology and methodology

An electronic landscape (e-scape) is a virtual environment which, in addition to containing browsable information, is a social place in its own right. The second year of the eSCAPE project is focussed on the construction and study of two thematic places - prototype demonstrators of these `electronic landscapes'. The two prototypes explore two extremes of this concept. The first is that of the `abstract' information space and is reported elsewhere. The second, reported here, is the `physical' more literal interpretation of an `electronic landscape'. The idea of a `physical' metaphor is that the e-scape is modeled on a literal landscape, that presents itself in a manner familiar to participants in much the same way that a real-world city immediately suggests familiar notions of transportation, navigation, interaction, purpose, and more subtle ideas such as the varying degrees of temporal permanence for its structures.