SiO2.nH2O (black opal)

-A friend of mine who is a palaeontologist in Australia told me that only one in a billion living things leaves a trace after it dies. SiO2.nH2O is located inside a round hut encased by a wooden slope painted in an artificial orange colour to resemble a red desert. The .n stands for variable content of water within the opal. Despite being found 23-40 metres underground, surrounded by thousands of years in sandstone and clay, trapped in a shape from the past, the opal acts as 'alive', a time machine, allowing an experience through a kinetic microscopic camera / sculpture displaying deep time visible here in the present, both through a projected live image and through the opal stone itself. It portrays the potential of life, encapsulated dormant inside, ready to awaken in the future. Perhaps long past our existence.