Sub_scape is a series of projects by Australian artists Kate Richards and Sarah Waterson that explores the potential of (and for) noisy intersections between datasets, archives and maps to produce emergent and deeply reflective topologies that upend the desire they express for a controlled and instrumental ‘sense making’. In the original 2004 iteration produced for ISEA Baltic (held on a Baltic ferry) sub_scape took the form of a submarine periscope that allowed the user to explore a datascape synthesised from environmental datasets from the Australian Desert and the Baltic Sea. The aim of the work was to explore the isomorphic characteristics and relations between these two widely differing landscapes as similarly affecting/reflecting deeply inscribed metaphysical, aesthetics, and political intensities. The second iteration of Sub_scape. sub_scapePROOF (2006) used the same periscope interface used in the previous iteration to synthesise a landscape of political and rhetorical sensemaking to explore the relations between truth, discourse and affect. The third and final interation of sub_scape, subscapeCYCLE, used a recumbant cycle as the interface for navigating a virtual landscape terraformed in real-time by data mapping ‘contemporary, technological, economic and cultural ills – some pre-cached some streaming in real-time from the web.’ In this iteration of the project the user navigates a landscape deformed (and deforming) by manifestation of human folly, idealism and agency. The user’s interaction actually reforms this twisted topology so that the input of energy, the user’s very attention, becomes the basis for a sustainable ecology.