Rather than responding to the brief with a monumental artwork “representing the heritage of Perth”, our design consists of an outcropping of human-scale Photobioreactors which relate to the city in a more nuanced way. These devices are intended to operate ontologically at both conceptual and visceral levels, in terms of space, color, luminosity, but also infrastructure and engineering. There are seven elements, tied together by a pleated, color-variegated groundscape which tracks a network of biofuel lines leading across the street to the Perth train station.

This project is an attempt to avoid the trappings of conventional public art which is often associated with large, often modern, expressions of form. The design does not signify, it performs. The Perth Photobioreactors gather energy by way of several interwoven high- and low-tech systems. These include a luminous, artificial photosynthetic system invented by OriginOil in Los Angeles, and thin-film solar transistors woven into ornamental electronic tracery. Now, one could argue that artwork shouldn’t actually do work, that art is by definition excessive. Of course there were also those who argued in the 20th century that multimedia art was not true art like painting. If this decade in human civilization has presented us with any resonant knowledge about our world, it is that energy is culturally precious, that it is possibly the ultimate medium. Energy may indeed be one of the most timely mediums for art.

Last week there was an article in the New York Times about Nikola Tesla, the famous physicist, who had a dream to transmit energy across airwaves. He was maybe a better artist than a scientist; his lasting impact was the atmospherics of his synthetic electrical storms rather than their potential viability. Our project for Forrest Place attends simultaneously to the realms of science and affect, in the tradition of Tesla’s genre.

Photobioreactor
The outer shells of the Photobioreactors are fiber-composite monocoque construction, pleated for stiffness. These structures support large transparent polycarbonate apertures to allow in sunlight while also protecting internal moving parts. Inside are coils of transparent acrylic which contain green or red algae colonies. The photosynthetic process of the algae requires carbon dioxide on the front end, and produces bio-diesel or hydrogen at the back-end. These devices therefore simultaneously remediate the environment by removing carbon dioxide from the local atmosphere and generate fuel in a closed-loop, off-the-grid system. One of the implications here is that energy production may, in the future, be super-localized and embedded in daily behaviors, rather than magically available from distant sources.

The benefit of the OriginOil system is that it allows for continued operation in shade and also in complete darkness through the use of a helix of lights inside each algae coil. These lights are triggered by low sunlight, so that at dusk, the cells will begin to turn on, one by one, generating a kaleidoscope of colored light and glowing algae. The result is a technologically ambient urban space, which also conveniently provides ground lighting for passers-by. Electricity required for this lighting is provided by the thin-film solar transistor system embedded in the transparent polycarbonate apertures, which charge during the day.