A handbook for technological inaesthetics, Ebner’s slim volume presents three collections of what appear to be plans for circuitry networks, sketches for information retrieval, and landscape outlines – all suggesting a hypothetical and fantastic environment. It is a presentation of the idea of landscape itself.
Accompanying and assisting Ebner’s diagrams are essays by by Ian Thompson, on “the structure of landscape,” and Ralf Adelmann, on “internetscapes.”
“With Portable Landscape Jorn Ebner is presenting a strangely hybrid object. His collection of fragments that includes circuit diagrams and building plans is a personal log as well as an universal landscape in the form of a book. On its pages, borders and dimensions seem to be shifting, and the concepts and representations of landscape are merging into one other. Ebner’s “reaction environments” and “energy fields” play with scale and legend, with the inside and out, and with the history and future of landscape. They not only construct spaces of artistic possibility but at the same time the equipment for their crossing.” – from the publisher.