Algae Screen Project_
(name TBD)
2024-Present
Algae, Aluminum, circuit board sensor, smart glass
(name TBD)
2024-Present
Algae, Aluminum, circuit board sensor, smart glass
Algae Screen is a long term research project, which enquires into different modes of sharing space, perception and agency with nonhuman life. The work is constructed as a living screen made of algae grown in culture, accompanied by sensing systems and smart glass panes that become opaque or transparent when electrically charged.
Originally, the work asked the question: how to share a space not only in a metaphorical sense, but in the physical, material sense, with an other life form whose needs and rhythms of life are radically other, whose very presence remains to a certain extent alien and unknown to us? By inscribing the cultivation of algae directly into the architecture of the work, the living screen operates as both interface and boundary to the space in which it is installed. Sensors relay data about light and humidity, and record changes in the environment, that in turn impacts the behaviour of the smart glass and is also altered by the movements of people around the installation.
In this environment, where machine and living organism are entangled and forming an assemblage, the algae appear as an active force, affecting the temporal and spatial experience of the viewer. The mutable opacity of the smart glass system mirrors this sense of relational uncertainty: at one moment lucid and transparent, at another moment closed or in resistance, like an act of withholding. Never fully knowable, the work presents a space which cannot be completely mastered or owned by humans.
Emerging between laboratory cultivation and prototyping, Algae Screen envisions a mode of ecological sharing that is responsive, fragile, and unresolved. The work speculates how a possible future environment might take shape when thinking of ecological cohabitation not as a harmonious balance but in terms of potential collaborations between biological cultivation and technological mediation.
Originally, the work asked the question: how to share a space not only in a metaphorical sense, but in the physical, material sense, with an other life form whose needs and rhythms of life are radically other, whose very presence remains to a certain extent alien and unknown to us? By inscribing the cultivation of algae directly into the architecture of the work, the living screen operates as both interface and boundary to the space in which it is installed. Sensors relay data about light and humidity, and record changes in the environment, that in turn impacts the behaviour of the smart glass and is also altered by the movements of people around the installation.
In this environment, where machine and living organism are entangled and forming an assemblage, the algae appear as an active force, affecting the temporal and spatial experience of the viewer. The mutable opacity of the smart glass system mirrors this sense of relational uncertainty: at one moment lucid and transparent, at another moment closed or in resistance, like an act of withholding. Never fully knowable, the work presents a space which cannot be completely mastered or owned by humans.
Emerging between laboratory cultivation and prototyping, Algae Screen envisions a mode of ecological sharing that is responsive, fragile, and unresolved. The work speculates how a possible future environment might take shape when thinking of ecological cohabitation not as a harmonious balance but in terms of potential collaborations between biological cultivation and technological mediation.