Synthenesis Workshop
©Fara Peluso - 2025
In collaboration with QuoArtis (ES)
Tilling Roots&Seeds, Production Grant Program 2024-2025
Synthesis workshop is the participatory aspect of Peluso's ongoing transdisciplinary research on Spirulina microalgae, imagining a scenario where, in the near future, people will be able to grow Spirulina as their own food supply, using transdisciplinary methods in their daily spaces and food intake.
The workshop explores how a DIY aquaculture bioreactor can be built to grow Spirulina microalgae and produce artificial pills, how they can be integrated into our daily lives and indoor spaces to improve human nutrition and mental health while supporting the ecosystem. The research also questions how we can shape the future promoting collective practices of care and decision-making as well linked to mental and physical well-being and social empowerment.
In fact, the Synthesis research also aims to investigate how Spirulina microalgae is linked to mental health due to its ability to release a high amount of vitamins and proteins (serotonin) into the body. These chemicals help to reduce stress inhibitions and improve the function of the vagus nerve, a fundamental nerve that controls the production of feelings, emotions and gastrointestinal problems.
The workshop is based on the practices of speculative design and DIY biology, which encourage people to immerse themselves in the existence of microalgae and to promote the values of speculative and critical thinking in design, art, science, the economy and social aspects.
Therefore, through its multidisciplinary methodology and participatory format, the participants will be able to understand how effective it can be to intervene in aspects of fundamental importance for a better present and future condition and for a more sustainable coexistence. They will therefore recognize why it is important today to be an active part of a system by manipulating the factors that have influenced and shaped our habits, our society and our choices
Synthenesis is also a living machine, an artwork installation which depicts a hybrid organ of human and non-human body and resembling the two body’s brains, cerebral and intestinal, developing synthetic and edible Spirulina pearls through a spherification chemical reaction; a process borrowed from the molecular gastronomy which encloses a liquid in a gel membrane of sodium alginate and calcium chloride.The work embodies a ‘cyborg’ identity through the philosophical work of Donna Haraway about human-machine and human-animal relations, presenting as a living machine which exists through the coexistence of separated entities and their interactions, the sharing of information between organic and inorganic matter, living and non-living entities.
Synthenesis embraces the idea that living machines in art and design extend to other forms of intelligence by mimicking, employing, and drawing attention to more-than-human as neglected companions. Therefore, it represents a new materialism by employing a post-humanist aesthetic where bodies and identities are of undefined origins and livingness takes form under a speculative lens, merging human and non-human as part of a feminist posthumanist discourse. Bringing livingness to its centre through a breathing body, it becomes a symbol that unites all species, as an holistic practice helping to be present and aware of life at the planetary scale. By seeing a body active in its breathing, we feel tuned with that existence and movement as part of a bigger community.
