Traceless

Sound Installation, 2024

Can ice perceive the presence of humans? When humans approach ice, does it know that it is being observed? If ice could communicate, how would it express itself? 

Traceless is an interactive sound installation with visual projections that invites participants to use handheld controllers for both audio and tactile interaction. In this work, ice is both a medium and a collaborator, symbolizing power in deep time and fragility in the Anthropocene. The installation captures the sounds of ice melting and dripping, and contrasts two timescales: the slow, natural progression of glacial formation and the rapid, human-accelerated retreat happening today.

By immersing participants in a multisensory experience, Traceless encourages them to rethink the role of humans in reshaping natural processes and to imagine a de-anthropocentric future.


In collaboration with Xinchen Liu
[Experiment]

The Anthropocene, a time defined by human impact since the 1950s, has led to significant environmental changes, often tied to the Earth's declining health [2]. Glacial ice, formed over centuries through the compression of snow into dense, airless layers, symbolizes the vast, slow forces of nature. However, this balance has been disrupted in the past two centuries. Human activities such as fossil fuel combustion, deforestation, urbanization, and industrialization have accelerated glacier melting, contributing to global warming and altering Earth's ecosystems. The contrast between glaciers' slow formation and rapid retreat shows the profound impact of human activities on natural processes.

Traceless is an interactive sound installation with visual projections that invites participants to use handheld controllers for audio and tactile interaction. Ice, a symbol of power in deep time and fragility in the Anthropocene [1], serves as both medium and collaborator in this work. Traceless includes the installation’s core structure, an interactive audio system, and visual projections. It captures the sounds of ice melting and dripping using contact microphones. The visual projections compare two timescales: the slow, natural progression of glacial formation and the rapid, human-accelerated retreat occurring today. We created animations of various forms of snowflakes combined with the rhythmic sound of dripping water to metaphorically represent the time spectrum of the various stages of glacier formation. To illustrate the impact of human activity on glacier melting, we utilized AI-driven videos generated through Stable Diffusion, along with the Greenland Surface Melt Extent dataset from the NSIDC (National Snow and Ice Data Center) [4]. The two visual effects were switched through tactile interactions—human touch transitioned the projection from snowflakes to glaciers, metaphorically representing human activity.

When participants hold the controller, the corresponding musical note will play. When participants speak to the installation, their voices blend with the natural sounds of melting ice, which forms an echo that embraces change as part of the natural system. Human language is not parsed semantically and becomes increasingly blurred in the echo. This is a call-and-response process, where the ice actively responds to the participants in their own rhythm that is not influenced by the participants, forming a mutual dialogue. The sounds metaphorically embed the vibrational frequencies of carbon-based life into the ancient resonance systems of geological formations. The sounds across material dimensions constitute dialogues between geological time and the Anthropocene. 

Traceless allows participants to experience and reflect on the agency of nature within a restricted dialogic framework. The asymmetric interaction exposes the boundaries of human intervention and guides participants to realize—through attempted "collaboration" with the installation—that symbiosis resides not in technological domination, but in what Donna Haraway calls “becoming-with” [3], an ongoing process of co-creation rather than control. Traceless suggests an alternative to anthropocentric narratives, urging audiences to rethink symbiosis beyond human terms and to imagine a de-anthropocentric future where nature asserts its own presence. By blending sound, touch, AI-generated visuals, and real-world environmental data, Traceless aims to offer a multi-sensory experience that is both poetic and unsettling—a reminder that the echoes of melting is a message from deep time that resonates with the Anthropocene.

Credits
Special thanks to Matti Niinimäki for all the help throughout the process, Xiaoqi Wang for help with video shooting and exhibition setup, and Ron from Aalto metal workshop for the support during the installation construction.

Reference
[1] Mark Carey. 2007. The history of ice: how glaciers became an endangered species. Environmental History 12, 3 (2007), 497–527.
[2] Paul J Crutzen. 2006. The “anthropocene”. In Earth system science in the anthropocene. Springer, 13–18.
[3] Donna J Haraway. 2016. Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. In Staying with the Trouble. Duke University Press.
[4] National Snow and Ice Data Center. 2025. Melt Data Tools. https://nsidc.org/ice-sheets-today/melt-data-tools Accessed: 2025-02-04.