In the future Saline world we might have to embrace radically different botanies, crops, and materials – but also create new narratives, beliefs and mythologies.
The feeling of Halophilia ( Love of Salt ) will have consequences we cannot yet imagine, shifting our ingrained biases, such as attitudes towards what defines invasive plants, what is a ‘wasteland’, the aesthetics of salt tailings or salt-loving microbes (halophytes) and extremophiles, even popular culture and fashion will somehow need to respond to the increasingly saline environments we previously tried to push back and considered hostile, damaging or undesirable. The agency of mineral worlds and novel halophilic ecologies will require us to create new artefacts as well as imaginaries to understand and navigate these environments.
The structures, objects, wearables and tools – in part scientific, in part cultural – are an ongoing research project to fabricate tangible fragments of a fast approaching future saline world.
- Salinity sensor stiletto
- Saltwater battery, Searles Lake
- Gemorama Pavilion, Searles Lake
- Brine graduation structure
- Salt/calcite concretions, Searles Lake concourse
- Potash salt tailings mountain
- Salt-lick Halophilia Shrine: constructed from 160 Animal Salt Lick blocks, 4 tons of salt, devotional objects include: halophyte bouquet of Sea lavender and Tamarisk (invasive)