A sibling piece to Digital Deliverance, Touch Trace deliberately eschews the white gloves typically associated with the conservationist principles of the archive, converging the legible with the tactile, and welcoming any residue left behind. Made of a shiny, non-toxic, mercurial-like metal, the work requires a small gesture––the participant’s touch––in exchange for an impermanent mark. The fingerprint, commonly associated with ‘booking’ in the criminal justice system, is no longer a record of an individual body but a traveling marker. Thus through the act of reading, the viewer embeds their biometric data onto the document, while the metal––which melts with body heat and solidifies at room temperature––becomes a temporary record, using the audience as a vehicle through which to enter the world outside the gallery.