Phycologica was an interactive, immersive installation by Studio Blue Green, showcasing microalgae’s ability to sequester carbon through the animating power of breath. It took place at Centrespace, Bristol, in October 2025.
Visitors were invited to exchange their breath with living algae. Their exhalation was absorbed by the algae array, leading to a transmission of light, sound, and wonder.
The exchange
A shared, innate physiological process — breath — became the interface between visitor and organism. As people exhaled into the array, the algae responded: light moved, sound rose, and an unseen world briefly made itself felt.
One of the first living things on Earth, algae holds deep wisdom — if we can pause and listen.
— Studio Blue Green
Foundational kin
Often only seen when warming waters cause harmful blooms, microalgae’s beneficial properties can be missed. Producing half the oxygen we breathe and removing atmospheric carbon more efficiently than trees, they’re a foundational species, crucial to planetary health.
For millennia, microalgae have enabled the ocean biome to regulate the planet, absorbing heat and carbon dioxide. Harnessing this photosynthetic process could be a powerful climate-mitigation application.
Inside the installation
A short film captures the exchange in motion:
Visitors leaning in, the array brightening with each breath, and sound blooming in response — the interaction reads instantly, without instruction.
The soundscape
Each pulse of light is paired with a generative tone drawn from the algae’s own response — a slow, breathing composition that shifts as visitors gather. Best heard with headphones, to feel the full depth of the piece.
A hopeful, multi-species future
The installation sought to create a magical interaction through a shared physiological process, encouraging deeper connection and reflection on our relationship with the unseen world — and a sense of timeless wonder.
Studio Blue Green aimed to spark imagination for a hopeful, multi-species future as we enter the Symbiocene: encouraging reciprocity, embracing nature-based solutions, and accelerating R&D in phyco-capture applications. They hoped audiences would reflect on our entangled relationship with hidden planetary systems, and on our role as stewards of them.
Reconnecting with our life-supporting algae kin
Algae, one of Earth’s earliest lifeforms, naturally absorb vast amounts of carbon dioxide and have produced oxygen for every second breath we take. Yet they remain largely unfamiliar and under-explored.
Can we attune to algae's primordial knowing, and cultivate its natural biochemical adaptations, through ecological practice, toward a regenerative future?
Making of
Project documentation
Full technical documentation for Phycologica — including design rationale, engineering notes, fabrication details, and research references — is available on Spore, an open-source field directory signposting the projects and knowledge growing a biopunk future.
Credits
- Studio Blue Green
- Andrew Stone & Jon Somerscales
- Design engineering
- Kaspar Bumke, Jon Somerscales, Chris McCall, Aran Dasan
- Lab work (adt.)
- Dr Chris Williamson, Andrew Stone, Rowan Dejardin, Sonia Giulietti and everyone at MicroLab and CCAP
- Fabrication (adt.)
- Chris McCall, Christian Eaton, Tim Baker, Stefan Roberts & Tim Kritikos
- Creative coding (adt.)
- Dave Webb
- Algae
- Pyrocystis Lunula
- Exhibition & engagement
- Andrew Stone, Cécile Pujol & On-Ying Chan
- Sonic meditations
- Ximena Alarcón
- Sound design
- Manu Fito Lopez, Jon Somerscales & Xavier Velastín
- Extended field recordings
- Laura Selby & Kathy Hinde
- Front of house
- Ella Chedburn
- Documentation
- Aleksander Domanski
- Special thanks
- MicroLab@Bristol (UoB), Culture Collection of Algae and Protozoa (CCAP), National Oceanography Centre, The Biodesign Collective, Living Ink, Notpla, Blackmore printers, The Studio in Bath.
- Funded by
- The CO2RE Hub (funded by Natural Environment Research Council), led by the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at University of Oxford.
Printed with Algae Ink (Living Ink) on Seaweed Paper (Notpla).