Collection highlight
DNA Vault
- Year
- 2022
- Medium
- Immersive installation — laser-engraved crystal jars, lighting, sound
- Status
- On display
Inside the museum's HEAL Institute, The Library presents 2,400 illuminated crystal jars, each laser-engraved with a single species — animal, insect, sea creature, plant or seed — preserved as genetic code, with a 3D model etched within the glass. Conceived by speculative-design studio Superflux, with interactivity by Marshmallow Laser Feast, the installation imagines a future archive of life on Earth, some species thriving and some already extinct by 2071. Lined in sustainable rattan palm and held in deliberate quiet, it functions as part seed bank, part cathedral — a meditation on biodiversity as something precious and precarious at once.