Imagining a speculative future where technological solutionism has been taken to an extreme, CAON – control and optimize nature, explores the potential of advanced technologies in the management of future ecosystems. In a habitat where animal, fungi, and plant species have been modified by 3D printing, CRISPR, and synthetic biology, the viewer observes an AI preventing the delicate ecosystem from collapsing. Interacting with a smartphone, the audience can navigate this habitat endlessly to learn about the plant and animal species that inhabit it. Acting as a testing ground to investigate existing techno-solutionist assumptions, CAON – control and optimize nature challenges the understanding of nature as a computable system, and investigates alternative cartographic scales that might lead to new representations of the environment.