Every Floating Matter Has Its Own Fingerprint

Every Floating Matter Has Its Own Fingerprint hybridizes “what has happened” with “what would have happened if…”, blurring the line between the past, the present, and the future. In the work, a piece of Halite, or the mineral form of sodium chloride, derived from the artists’ personal journey in the Atacama regions of present-day Chile, is adopted into an electronic circuit. The crystal, activated by a bone-conducting transmitter, emits high-pitched frequencies of distorted voices while a monophonic earphone recirculates the voices and tells a fragmented story of two fictional characters tracing water and discovering salt in the middle of a desert during their seemingly disparate yet overlapping expeditions. 

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English Transcript of the Audio (originally in Mandarin Chinese): 

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… the wind howled as the sun began to set, providing some relief from the scorching heat. We started climbing the crusted sand dunes, but it was a struggle as we slipped down two steps for every one we climbed. The sand and salt kept pouring into our shoes, but we had to keep climbing up with our heads down to reach the top …

 

… following a narrow mountain ridge, I crawled on all fours towards the highest point I could reach. The wind and sand hit my face as I squinted my eyes, hoping to see a bit farther. I heard that the moon tonight would be red, and the white-covered mountains stretched as far as the eye could see with speckled crystals weaving in and out of the sand …

 

… we stumbled upon a huge pit, at least 20 meters deep, while following the ruins left behind by a civilization …

 

… the environment was eerily quiet, except for the crisp and methodical cracking sounds that echoed in the pit. Removing my face mask, I realized the sounds were coming from the white crystals that layered downward on the wall of rocks inside the pit, causing the rocks to crack and burst …

 

… the air slowly became humid with a salty smell as I delved deeper on the rocky walls, with the path growing narrower and narrower …

 

… the scorching sun made me nervous as I tried to focus on finding the piece of volcanic rock. Finally, following the white line formed by the white crystals on the rock wall, I saw the scorching hot volcanic rock, which weighed thousands of kilograms, with remnants of morning dew still palpable on its back …

 

… as I approached the lake, the wind carried a saltiness ten times stronger than the sea, making me cough. The lake shone dazzlingly white, and faint marks left by water flowing through the desert could be seen. Crystals were everywhere, and every step produced a grinding, crushing sound as the crystals were ground to pieces, some of which jabbed into my feet. The place was covered in salt-coated crystals that evaporated, grew again, and were destroyed once more, repeating the cycle endlessly … 

 

… the stone that looked like snow from a distance was gnarled and twisted, with crystals sprouting from the crevices, coated in salt. A ring of weeds grew around the edge of the lake, with green algae swaying in the depths. Walking deeper into the lake, the white patches became more frequent, covering the entire lake and seeping into the pores of the surrounding sand. It was like walking in a blizzard, where I could hardly distinguish near from far, almost experiencing a brief moment of blindness. Amidst the dense white, I caught a glimpse of rusted metal wreckage disintegrating …