On the 20th of April 2020, the price of oil went negative for the first time in history. 
The expectation of the value of the commodity going forward was set to be below zero.
The practical implication of the negative price meant that oil producers would offer to pay
warehouse buyers money to get rid of the excess supply of barrels.
Hedge funds and other speculators would use drone and satellite imagery
to estimate how full or empty the oil cylinders were at a certain point in time.
They would use the images taken from above to capture the shadows on top of their floating roofs,
which would then inform the futures speculation. And so when the storage was full, the prices would drop.
Crude oil went from resource to waste in a matter of hours.

Excerpt from "Cassandra. Building Climate Futures" a speculative design research project  
for The Terraforming 2020 programme at the Strelka Institute, Moscow.

Text and video by Laura Cugusi, Chiara Di Leone, Anastasiia Noga.

Procedurally generated world:  Alessandro Bertelle 
Soundtrack:  Claude Speeed  
Voice over:  Malak Helmy
Graphic design: @0ffsh0.re @ongoing_projects 

Program Director:  Benjamin Bratton
Tutors: Nicolai Boyajev, Lisa Dorrer

Cassandra is featured in 

@tbilisiarchitecturebiennial @kaleidoscopemagazine issue #37 OUT THERE
@dutchdesignweek @baltanlaboratories #economiafestival @fictionaljournal 
@fiberfestival