Seasons of The Void
Monday, 30 December 2013
Collaboration between Sascha Pohflepp, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg and Andrew Stellitano
“Humans on a mission to Mars must either take their provisions with them or cultivate food to sustain their voyage. Seasons of the Void responds to current proposals to use synthetic biology to produce food in space through the design of organisms that electrosynthesise rather than photosynthesise.
Here, electricity flows through a dark tank connected to ship’s solar panels. Inside, two symbiotic cultures of modified yeast feed on the electricity, forming spherical fruit-like shapes in microgravity – a radical departure from how most life on Earth converts energy.
Cut open, a harvested fruit reveals a structure that resembles the growth rings of a tree. A record of the 377 days of the journey; the diminishing power of the Sun, the magnetic field within the tank at times having been distorted by solar flares, a brief moment in the shadow of Venus that momentarily halted the growth and small streaks in the fruit, left by cosmic rays.
Astronauts would be farmers of the void as well as its explorers; their ship, a celestial body in its own right as its artificial ecosystem orbits the Sun.”