Method, system, and software for performing independent operations with and upon N-Dimensional spatial and temporal objects displayed in virtual and real visualization systems. The technique applies user selected points or regions of interest in the visualization system to identify corresponding points or regions on transparent focus objects which describe the visualized objects, and which intersect the user's topological line of sight. The resulting set of points or regions are then used to extract information from the focus objects, which provide additional information on object content or location of related file systems. The transparent interface provides intrinsic operations which can be applied directly to the focus objects, or coupling mechanisms to external user applications, to process, manipulate or transform focus objects in either the transparent interface or the visualization system.