THE SOLAR SHARE

This artistic provocation estimates how much new solar energy is metabolized by photosynthetic organisms at a planetary scale — a process fundamental to life on Earth.

THE SOLAR SHARE stages a form of planetary economics based on photosynthesis. Every day, a one-square-meter microalgae bioreactor converts sunlight into edible biomass. This daily yield becomes a concrete measure of solar income: actual new energy entering Earth’s living metabolism.

The project proposes this edible biomass as a speculative economic unit — a “Solar Share” — through which human needs can be understood in relation to the planet’s annual photosynthetic budget. It is a photosynthetic proof of work that can be consumed, exchanged, or stored.

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A PROJECT BY DISNOVATION.ORG — 2024... [INSTALLATION, AUTOMATED SPIRULINA CULTIVATION, LIVE STREAMING, CUSTOM SOFTWARE]
CO-DESIGN: KATHARINA AMMANN | PROJECT ASSISTANTS: ROMAIN THERON, LÉO LIMA
CO-PRODUCTION: IFT PARIS, MATRICE.IO PARIS, XCENTER NOVA GORICA, ART2M, AND MORE-THAN-PLANET
The project was co-commissioned by HAC TE with the support of the S+T+ARTS programme of the European Union. It was inspired by the challenge “Understanding and engineering photosynthesis for a more sustainable future”, launched by the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), and by the discussions held with the Photon Harvesting in Plants and Biomolecules (ICFO) research group during the project's research phase.














THE SOLAR SHARE invites audiences to experience, firsthand and with their own bodies, a transformative economic model in which human metabolic needs are understood in relation to new energy reaching Earth from the Sun and transformed by photosynthetic organisms.

THE SOLAR SHARE proposes units of photosynthetic biomass that have metabolized solar energy in forms humans require at the base of the food chain. More materially grounded than money units, this unit of stored energy can form the basis of a new economic model by which we can better understand human sustainability within planetary limits.

Through The Solar Share and the accompanying series of ceramic plates, Eating the Sun, Disnovation.org underscores humanity's reliance on photosynthesis. Solar energy underpins the entire food chain and indirectly powers nearly all human activities, including gathering, hunting, farming, heating, building, and transportation. Photosynthetic organisms convert the Sun's energy into organic matter, producing the carbon compounds that form the basis of all life on Earth.

By recognizing the critical role of photosynthesis, The Solar Share introduces a new kind of economic tool that balances human needs with the planet's ecological limits. This shift is critical because what a healthy biosphere itself can offer in terms of resources is finite and extractive mining is irreversible, meaning that only the network of matter-energy fed directly and indirectly by the Sun can be truly sustainable.