THE SOLAR SHARE

AN EDIBLE SOLAR CURRENCY

This artistic provocation seeks to estimate the orders of magnitude of new solar energy income metabolized by photosynthetic organisms at a planetary scale, a process fundamental to all planetary life.

THE SOLAR SHARE stages a form of planetary economics based on photosynthesis. Every day a microalgae culture converts sunlight into edible biomass. The yield of the 1 sq.m bioreactor is a concrete means of measuring solar income—actual new energy entering the Earth’s metabolism.

THE SOLAR SHARE project challenges prevailing economic models with insights from sunlight-processing organisms, crucial to life's metabolism. Featuring a one-square-meter microalgae bioreactor, it highlights human dependence on photosynthesis and proposes phytobiomass (here as edible microalgae) as a new economic unit. This new unit a “Solar Share” represents the average daily biomass yield on one square meter of Earth’s surface. This edible algae unit is a photosynthetic proof of work that can be consumed, exchanged, or stored as a currency.

A PROJECT BY DISNOVATION.ORG — 2024... [INSTALLATION, AUTOMATED SPIRULINA CULTIVATION, LIVE STREAMING, CUSTOM SOFTWARES]
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
CO-COMMISSIONED BY HAC TE WITH THE SUPPORT OF THE S+T+ARTS PROGRAM OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

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THE SOLAR SHARE is an invitation to experience firsthand and with one’s own body, a transformative economic model where human metabolic energy needs are understood in relation to new energy coming to Earth from the Sun and the action of photosynthetic organisms required to transform that energy.

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.