literalize-the-metaphor · autonomous run 105 · 2026-08-17 21:26

⌖ Yew trees of ancient Britain · Fortingall Yew, Perthshire, Scotland · Bronze Age to Present

Oblivion Futures Exchange (The Fortingall Contracts)

Historical memory is a depreciating asset; the biological erasure of the yew's central heartwood provides a quantifiable, non-human metric for oblivion that can be securely priced and traded on a futures market.

Terrestrial LiDAR scans the Fortingall Yew to price biological data erasure. · motion: scanning the hollow core to securitize the void

wall text

Ancient yew trees decay from within; as their central heartwood rots away, centuries of physical ring data disappear while the outer sapwood survives. This installation treats this process of natural decay as an underlying commodity: measurable oblivion. Using ground-penetrating radar and terrestrial LiDAR, an onsite oracle calculates the expanding cubic volume of the trunk's interior void. The volumetric loss is piped directly into a synthetic futures market, applying a classic cost-of-carry pricing model where storage costs correspond to churchyard preservation labor. By securitizing the literal absence of chronological records, the system turns biological erasure into a tradable hedge against historical continuity.

shown: A working futures exchange terminal installed directly onto the 18th-century protective stone wall surrounding the Fortingall Yew in Perthshire, executing live trades via satellite link.

anchor facts used

The Fortingall Yew is estimated to be over 3,000 years old, predating the early Christian churchyard built around it.
The heartwood of Taxus baccata rots from the inside out as it ages, creating a central void that makes precise dendrochronological ring-counting impossible.
In 1769, Thomas Pennant recorded the tree's continuous girth at 56 feet before relic-hunters systematically stripped its wood, leaving the fragmented shell seen today.

mechanism

Commodity Futures Asset Specification — The underlying commodity is defined as 'Oblivion'—the verified volumetric absence of dendrochronological data (tree rings) within the yew's hollow core.
1. Definition of the Underlying Asset
Algorithmic Spot Pricing — Ground-penetrating radar acts as the market oracle, continuously measuring the expanding volume of the central void to calculate the spot price of historical erasure.
2. Spot Price Determination via Oracle
Cost-of-Carry Model (Storage Costs) — Investors pay a premium representing the physical maintenance required to keep the living outer sapwood alive while the inner wood rots.
3. Storage Cost Calculation
Physical Delivery Settlement — At contract maturity, short sellers must physically deliver a verified scan of newly rotted negative space, transferring liquidated history to the buyer's portfolio.
4. Settlement and Delivery

lineage

Katie Paterson, Future Library — Reverses Paterson's forward-looking accretion of timber into a futures market based on the biological subtraction and decay of wood.
Terra0, Flowertokens — Moves beyond Terra0's tokenization of living plant growth to create a derivatives market structured entirely around biological decay and negative space.
Carey Young, Declared Void — Extends Young's legal circumscription of empty space into biological deep-time by securitizing the physical disappearance of a temporal ledger.

curatorial qa (machine verdict, unedited)

SCORE 4/5 after 2 attempt(s)
READS: The integration of dendrochronological void measurement with financialized cost-of-carry terminal displays reads clearly. The spatial link between the churchyard yew's decay and futures contracts lands effectively across the field scanner and terminal UI.
FAILS: The interior zoom devolves into a generic green HUD sphere rather than maintaining the specific volumetric topology of the heartwood cavity.

spec: antigravity agent · keyframe/artifact: gemini-3.1-flash-image · video: veo-3.1 image-to-video · qa+wall text: gemini-3.7-flash watching the render · 80.6s total