SUPERSOLID

Three rectangular objects are severed through their centers, exposing their cross-sections. Like a body cut open to reveal its internal tissue, the cut surfaces of the objects are presented openly and without concealment. Yet the patterns on the opposing surfaces continue to change, as though the objects were still functioning.
Many of the entities surrounding us are enclosed by outer shells that keep their internal structures hidden. Even without knowing exactly how they operate, we accept that everything functions according to its own mechanisms. As technology becomes increasingly complex, an understanding of its underlying principles is often limited to a small number of specialists, widening the gap between technological systems and the general public. Without knowing precisely how the things around us operate or what purposes they serve, we increasingly come to experience technology as something resembling magic.
We commonly describe the movement of data as a “flow of data.” But can data actually flow? If data composed of bits were imagined in physical form, it would be difficult to picture it as something organic and fluid. Yet data is constantly moving in real time within invisible layers of our surroundings, traveling in vast quantities and in countless directions. Inside a computer composed of rigid materials such as steel frames, fiberglass, epoxy resin, copper, and aluminum, nothing physically flows in the conventional sense. Nevertheless, we perceive data as something that “flows” through it.
Although humans live through physical sensation, we no longer accept only what can be directly perceived as real. We know that data moves through invisible domains, processors perform calculations, and sensors measure the physical world.
SUPERSOLID gives a physically perceptible form to things that remain invisible yet undeniably exist. The displays forming the cut surfaces of the rectangular objects illuminate pixels generated through the operations of countless circuits and processors, which we perceive as a single image. The image produced by the display is simultaneously illusion and reality. The fictional cross-section presented by the display is perceived as the actual interior of the object, even as we know that it is not a physical cross-section. Yet because it retains the familiar qualities of physical perception, it can still be sensed as a “cross-section.” Through this overlap, SUPERSOLID openly exposes the interiors of entities that are at once familiar and unfamiliar within our surroundings.
The two opposing cross-sections display images of corresponding colors. Although the object has been physically severed, the two surfaces still appear to remain connected or to continue functioning together. This may be perceived as though a portion of the object has simply been temporarily “hidden,” or as a connection that continues within an invisible domain despite the physical separation.
The title SUPERSOLID refers to the supersolid state of matter. A supersolid maintains spatial order characteristic of a solid while simultaneously exhibiting properties of superfluidity. Two qualities that appear contradictory, crystalline order and superfluid behavior, coexist within a single state. Such behavior emerges from quantum mechanical phenomena that differ significantly from the material conditions of everyday experience.
The world we inhabit is likewise no longer defined solely by familiar physical sensations. We live with a new mode of perception in which we understand that invisible processes are constantly operating and accept their outcomes as real. As the boundary between the real and the virtual becomes increasingly blurred, the virtual becomes real while the real overlaps with virtual domains. In this coexistence of seemingly different states within a single world, the condition we inhabit begins to resemble the dual nature of a supersolid.