CO2RE Artists: Studio Blue Green
Phycologica
Studio Blue Green’s exhibit, Phycologica, was an interactive, immersive installation showcasing microalgae’s ability to sequester carbon, through the animating power of breath. It took place at Centrespace, Bristol, in October 2025.
Visitors were invited to exchange their breath with living algae. Their exhalation, was absorbed by the algae array, leading to a transmission of light, sound, and wonder.
Often only seen when warming waters cause harmful blooms, microalgae’s beneficial properties can be missed. Producing half the oxygen we breathe and removing atmospheric carbon more efficiently than trees, they’re a foundational species, crucial to planetary health.
For millennia microalgae have enabled the ocean biome to regulate the planet, absorbing heat and carbon dioxide. Harnessing this photosynthetic process could be a powerful climate-mitigation application.
The installation sought to create a magical interaction through a shared innate physiological process to encourage deeper connection and reflection on our relationship with the unseen world, creating a sense of timeless wonder. One of the first living things on Earth, in its history of adaptation algae holds deep wisdom, if we can pause and listen.
Studio Blue Green aimed to spark imagination for a hopeful multi-species future as we enter the Symbiocene – encouraging reciprocity, embracing nature-based solutions and accelerating R&D in Phyco-Capture applications.
They hoped audiences would reflect on our entangled relationship with the unseen world and hidden planetary systems, encouraging environmental stewardship.
Image Credits:
- Phycologica,
- Centrespace Bristol
- Film projection. ‘Kofoid & Swezy, 1921’ by Protist Lab Films
- Visitors to the Exhibit
- Phycologica gallery text
- Visitors to the Exhibit.
- 3D prints of algae, made using algae filament
- Blackboard of feedback from the event
Reconnecting with our life-supporting algae kin
Algae, one of Earth’s earliest lifeforms, naturally absorb vast amounts of carbon dioxide and have produced oxygen for every second breath we take. Yet they remain largely unfamilar and under-explored.
Can we attune to algae’s primordial knowing, and cultivate its natural biochemical adaptations, through ecological practice, towards a regenerative future?
Microscopy image of Pyrocystis lunula (Algae featured in installation)
Credit @thejoyofalgae
About the Artist - Blue Studio Green
Studio Blue Green aims to amplify and recentre living systems, through experience design and creative technology, to create impactful, planet-first interventions, encouraging environmental stewardship and ecological consciousness.
Studio Blue Green is Jon Somerscales and Andrew Stone, who formed the Bristol-based biodesign studio, drawing on their background producing interactive Art-Science installations, to make meaningful and impactful eco-centric works, united by their passion for telling untold stories and revealing the unseen world.
Follow Studio Blue Green on Instagram