Terra Analytica

Finis-terra installation image consisting of two hamacs with woven textile depicting GIS data of agricultural fields. — 'Finis terra' by FRAUD, 2018, Pine, wool & silk leftover thread, cotton rope. 9’ 10.11’’ x 3’ 1.24 (each hammock). EIB Institute, permanent collection. Photo by Vincenzo Cardile.

Patchwork of agricultural fields viewed from above showing the health of cornfields, as measured by the infrared reflectiveness of Descartes Labs geospatial intelligence software. — The health of cornfields, as measured by the infrared reflectiveness of Descartes Labs geospatial intelligence software. Src: Robinson Meyer, “The Start-up That Watches Corn Grow, From Orbit,” Atlantic, August 10, 2016.

'Finis terra', FRAUD (2018). Illingworth Kerr Gallery. Image by to Carolina Vasquez-Lazo.

FRAUDtone, a colour following the Pantone model, named Crop Yield Prediction Gold, inspired by the 'Finis terra' project. — 'Crop Yield Prediction Gold' follows FRAUD's efforts to think through colour for each of our project.

Image by Stradanus from 1630 titled: (loosely translated to) Amerigo Vespucci awakens a sleeping America. — Stradanus J. (1630). Loosely translated to 'Amerigo Vespucci awakens a sleeping America'. An early European depiction of the hammock by Stradanus is famously used in postcolonial studies to critique the so called “Awakening” of America by Amerigo Vespucci. In this image, an often-overlooked detail is that “America” was disturbed from History’s slumber from the comfort of a hammock’s net.

A meme often refered to as the Bread Helmet Guy, showing a protester wearing loaves of bread around his head. — The infamous “Bread Helmet Guy” meme is in fact a Yemeni protester who was spotted at a street demonstration wearing loaves of bread around his head; from “Bread Helmet Man— Image #97, 640,” Know Your Meme.

Image shows a Spring Carpet named the Jaipur Garden Carpet and the analysis of the areas it designates. — The Jaipur Garden Carpet mapped out from Maurice Sven Dimand, “A Persian Garden Carpet in the Jaipur Museum,” Ars Islamica 7, no. 1, (1940): 95–8.

Screenshot of the 'Finis terra' website: https://finisterra.fraud.la. — A website of research bringing together different research strands which informed the 'Finis terra' project: https://finisterra.fraud.la/

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Terra analytica or Finis terra is an art-led inquiry into the subjection of terrestrial sense data and movements to mathematical formulae. It asks: what onto-epistemologies are modes of geospatial analytics mobilizing?

Comprised of a set of hammocks, each is woven with silk and wool patterns that depict crop yield prediction through the Descartes software. The latter couples satellite imagery and machine learning–based pattern recognition to identify crop segmentation and forecast crop yield, indicating “real time” value. These prognostications inform live commodity trading and insurance valuation.

Figures which informed Finis terra include the Spring Carpet, which introduces the expression of ordering nature as individuated elements from which greater generalizations can be inferred, and the hammock, which bridges the colonial capture of space and peoples made possible through the Cartesian separation between observer and observed inherent in environmental analysis.

Finis terra(e) is a Latin term which designates 'a payment in settlement, fine or tax', as well as the land's end, thus a coupling with the historic-material process of the 'frontier thesis'. With what is now called geospatial intelligence, space emerges as the last frontier of capture, actuated by technical and financial systems.

In some respects, Finis-terra also refers to the end of the earth as a habitable planet, not as an inevitable scenario, but rather a cautionary tale. Fatalism poisons the nourishment of practices capable of restoring the world and as such, it is paramount to refute the inevitability of planetary crisis.

The installation and performance of Finis terra has aimed to thread possible anti-colonial epistemologies that explore alternative modes of understanding the world through the body, guided by the Andean philosopher Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui's call for an embodied-earth-thinking.

The project has received the support of the European Investment Bank and is part of the EIB Institute's permanent collection.

Exhibited at the European Investment Bank [Luxembourg, LU] and the Illingworth Kerr Gallery (Alberta, CA).

Performance: Whitechapel Gallery [London, UK]

Further information: https://finisterra.fraud.la/

Publication: Terra Analytica: The Automated Gaze of Corn and Soy (2023). Afterimage (2023) 50 (2): 24–44. https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2023.50.2.24