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Algae inspired Amy Caron to create her voluminous installation at The Leonardo. Hear how she was awed by the influence, presence, form, and uses of this unexpected organism.
Algae has been discounted and misunderstood for years, but without its remarkable history, the world we know could not exist. Through billions of years of photosynthesis, it has created up to 80 percent of the oxygen we breathe.
Algae
Like algae itself has adapted to every environment from acidic hot springs to arctic tundra, Holotype’s early evolution will give form to this creature that resists easy classifcation — that’s neither animal nor plant, that’s destructive yet indispensable, that thrives in every ecosystem. Holotype is deliberately obtuse about its subject, provoking you to take closer look, encouraging a kind of scrutiny required to understand algae itself.
Biofuel
Ancient fossilized algae beds became today’s crude oil that powers our cars and economies. Algae diminishes the efects of climate change by fxing carbon, and reduces bacteria and toxins in wastewater by consuming nitrates and phosphates. Algal biofuel could supplant U.S. imports of foreign oil, does not compete for arable land, and far outstrips conventional fuel sources with its capacity for renewability. Imagine all that algal biofuel may eventually make possible. The world’s oldest energy source could be its newest.
