Atlas of the Natural History of 2026 · Endangered Species: Claudio Gay's 1854 atlas of Chile, redrawn as a census of what the smartphone is eating.

I found the Atlas de la historia física y política de Chile, drawn by Claudio Gay in Chile between 1828 and 1842 and printed in Paris in 1854, in Memoria Chilena and in the Getty copy held by the Biodiversity Heritage Library. I cropped ten of its plates, five scenes of Chilean life and five hand-colored zoology plates, and built one Recraft V4 Style from them. With it I drew the atlas Gay would print in 2026: eight species the smartphone has eaten or is eating, each shown as a specimen with its parts above and in a scene of use below, and a tenth plate of the predator with its heirs. The curves are real series from the Federal Reserve, the CTIA, the ITU, the Universal Postal Union, the FAO and industry bodies, set in code together with the typography. Every plate is a Recraft generation made with the Style and upscaled in Recraft; the text and the data curves are set in code on top of it.

The plates: 1 Title page · 2 Compact camera, Camera compacta · 3 Text message, Nuntius brevis · 4 Compact disc, Discus compactus · 5 Check, Charta solvens · 6 Cash, Pecunia manualis · 7 Letter, Epistola domestica · 8 Printed newspaper, Diarium impressum · 9 Landline telephone, Telephonus domesticus · 10 Smartphone, Telephonus sapiens, with its heirs.