Museum of Phantom Peripheries

Reimagining Lost Landscapes (Terra Perdita) in 4IR

Fahmeeda Osman

MArch 2022

Supervisors:
Unit Leader: Craig McClenaghan
Unit Tutor: Ruby Mungoshi
Unit Assistant: Azraa Gabru

UNIT 21
Phantom Cartographies

Awards
Distinction

My project focuses on themes of loss and transition in the context of the radical ramifications of climate change on the global landscape. My research explores the natural developments, disappearances, and transformations of landscape, which then inform a series of speculative provocations. Emphasis is placed on the interconnected relationship between living beings and landscapes, as ever evolving ‘organisms.’ Hence, I explore tangible and ethereal themes, including imprint, residue, memory, transfer, and materiality. Place and narrative are also crucial elements, so my research methods include visual cartographic practices, atlasing of multiple temporalities and the translation of conventional mapping into the realm of mixed reality. Owing to us living through the 4th Industrial Revolution, I examine the potential of Mixed Reality, which is the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualisations where physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real-time. In this way, I provide new ways of experiential engagement with the Terra Perdita, namely the lost landscapes across multiple scales, geography, and time. As Kim Stanley Robinson’s writing offers us a future experience of the effects of climate change before we face the consequences ourselves, so the Museum of Phantom Peripheries asks “can imagination awaken us to the shrinking planet and the consequences that follow?”

Keywords:
Terra Perdita, Aqua Firma, Mixed Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Proliferation, Conjure, Transfer, Residue, Symbiosis, Haiku, Narrative