'Hidden Key: The Arrival' is a browser-based multimedia installation set in the period between 2068-2075. Its contents are a documentation of the findings of an alienated carbon-capture researcher and technician (CCRT) named Dr. Levi Elwood. The work functions as a diegetic cabinet-of-curiosities, co-created by Dr. Elwood and their raven companion, seeking to explore the human and more-than-human implications of preservation, behaviours of collection and 'nesting', and the often futility that these impulses embody. Site-specific instances of Iceland's landscapes and entanglements are captured through photogrammetry and displayed diaristically in a three-dimensional environment, navigable through WASD controls.

The fluid mechanics of the space allow participants to enter structures and objects that would otherwise be solid, creating liminal spaces in the absence of solid matter. Observing the topologies of these artefacts from within becomes diegetic ground for speculation regarding their provenance. 'Hidden Key: The Arrival' addresses questions regarding preservation: where did these objects come from, what needs to be preserved, what is allowed to pass on, and at what cost. The name ‘Hidden Key’ is a direct translation of an Icelandic strain of primrose, called Huldulykill, which is prevalent in Icelandic magical thinking as being a signal for more-than-human presence, of an inexplicable feeling of being surveilled.

‘The Arrival’ is not only a data-base of more-than-human entanglements (abbreviated as MOTHEs); it is a virtual space simulating a deployment to an unfamiliar, hostile place, that one cannot keep their eyes away from, in spite of its strangeness. Natural surveillance and the feeling of unease it provokes, becomes a fantastic ground for non-anthropocentric ecological thinking. Functioning as both a stand-alone artwork and a virtual environment embedded within a larger world-building project, 'Hidden Key: The Arrival' is the first instalment of the ongoing 'Hidden Key' triptych, followed by 'Hidden Key: The Endling' and 'Hidden Key: The Detritus’, which the designer hopes to develop as a third instalment of this project.

'Hidden Key: The Endling' is an object emerging from the world-building of the 'Hidden Key' triptych, this time functioning as the diegetic prototyping of the CCRT's preservation efforts of the Huldulykill endling – the last known individual of its species. Taking the appearance of a grave, the work poses a moral dilemma around preservation, and seeks to question the future meanings of, and intentions behind the word. Contrasting the virtual preservation of 'Hidden Key: The Arrival', 'The Endling' brings physicality to the world, allowing participants to meditate on the preserved object they are presented with, an entanglement suspended in a state of limbo: not fully alive, yet not allowed to pass on.