Nancy Holt was invited in 1988 to create a work for the campus of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth through the Massachusetts Art in Public Places Program. The university's roots lie in the New Bedford Textile School, where Holt's grandfather, Samuel Holt, taught. This personal connection informed Holt's engagement with the commission, though it was unknown to the commissioners at the time of her invitation.

Nancy Holt’s terrain in Underscan is the home of her aunt Ethel Tate in New Bedford, Massachusetts which is presented in still images, alongside excerpts from letters written to the artist. In this video she works with the glitches in communication, in recollection, in the very technology of video recording, paying particular attention to her aunt's poignant experience of aging.