Did you ever want to go to Mars but you didn’t know what to pack in your lunch box? Welcome to Cyano Automaton’s workshop, where attendees got a glimpse on how to grow their own spirulina and use it to prepare delicious space food recipes, right here on Earth.
What about snacking on spirulina, a biomass of cyanobacteria rich in nutrients, vitamins and minerals? Spirulina will in fact be included in astronauts’ diet during extended space travel.
Welcome to Cyano Automaton’s workshop, where attendees got a glimpse on how to grow your own spirulina and use it to prepare delicious space food recipes, right here on Earth! It was also the background for a critical discussion on terrestrial and interplanetary colonization, of which cyanobacteria –as the first photosynthetic organisms on the planet – have been key players.
The workshop was built around the Cyano Automaton, an interactive bioreactor that cultivates spirulina and gives voice to this species to tell a story about past, present, and future colonizations. The reactor takes data from space explorations and terrestrial conquests to intertwine a multifaceted narrative, dictated by the bacteria’s own growing cycles.
The bioreactor is physically located in Helsinki, Finland, but available to the public online during the Uroboros Festival 2021 at www.cyano-automaton.monster.
Participants were encouraged to bring dry spirulina (available in most shops with healthy food). Easy access to basic kitchen utensils was also encouraged. However, people without access to these resources were welcome to participate in the workshop (without hands-on activities).
The Cyano Automaton workshop was part of the Feral Creative Practices track at the Uroboros Festival 2021, along with Nocturne Altar Hack: Wild Designs for New Eco-rituals by Isabelle Beavers, Building a vocabulary for change by Amira Hanafi, More-than-human derive and the workshops Feral ways of knowing and transformation and Learning Feral Ways of Transformation – hands on workshop. The festival track concluded with an open conversation on Feral Creative Practices.
CreaTures project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870759. The content presented represents the views of the authors, and the European Commission has no liability in respect of the content.
