What I’m studying is something dynamic. So the representation should be dynamic.”

Dynamicland is a spatial computing project and new tech organization located in Oakland, California. They are dedicated to understanding how user interfaces will evolve over thousands of years. Dynamicland transforms a building into a computer–the UI can be a wall, or a table. Paper and sticky notes can be found everywhere. The ceilings are covered in cameras and projectors. Each individual section of paper is its own piece of the Lua programming language. Some printouts have their own code printed on them. One use is with paper representing datasets, and moving them together to the graph sheet, bringing the data into the graph. Another page uses a stick as a slider to pick the year of information visualized. Multiple users can interact with a program and the code directly, and together in the same space. Dynamicland as a creative space reflects the vision of SpatialFlow, creating an environment encouraging collaboration and playful experimentation, as well as movement through the space. The concept of using physical objects differs from that of SpatialFlow, where the user currently only manipulates virtual objects in the room. Dynamicland’s displays are rather flat, as they are based on sheets of paper, while SpatialFlow’s visualizations are three-dimensional for the most part. It will be interesting to see how the physical and the virtual can be best combined for ease of use. Dynamicland has inspired the transition of SpatialFlow’s prototype into more of an open-office plan environment, where creators may feel more at home. This allows users to understand the context of the space they are creating in, making it more believable and relatable to real working environments.

“The idea of using physical objects as the computational medium is the focus of the group. What you see here is just the surface of where we want to go with it. We don’t want you to write code to make these things. You should be able to draw a diagram and have this interpreted as a diagram,” he said.

each individual piece of paper on the walls and tables, here, is essentially its own snippet of the Lua programming language. Some pieces of paper have their working code printed on them. Dynamicland can actually perform OCR on that code and run it in real-time, but generally, it uses that code symbolically in the real world and has its own digital portion stashed on the server-side. However, when an object is changed, the system can highlight the changed lines on the paper printouts, and it has the ability to tag code sheets that are out of sync with their updated digital counterparts.

In Dynamicland, the computational media is not "hidden away in isolated virtual worlds", but rather exists in the common meatspace for all to see and get their hands on. This enables powerful ways of collaboration and sharing, working together with many hands and in eye contact with others around you. Dynamicland is "as multiplayer as the real world". Another Dynamicland principle is that everyone, not just specialist technicians, can make apps, these dynamic documents of the new medium. And everyone can modify existing artefacts to make them do what they want, just as anyone can craft artful or useful things from paper and clay and office supplies. In Dynamicland one walks the path from playing to crafting to remixing all the way to building useful things. This is programming liberated from the confines of the iridescent rectangle.

Operationally Dynamicland, Victor's research lab, follows the spirit of Douglas Engelbart and Xerox PARC, who decades ago invented the technologies and principles that became the foundation of the computer revolution and the information age. This first DL instance in Oakland is being realised by a small non-profit research group with a long-term orientation, something Victor is highly passionate about.