University of Technology, Sydney will feature their own installation in this year’s Vivid Sydney festival, making them the first university to do so.
Their display, ‘Living Lights” is comprised of a series of coloured vertical tubes up to 2.5m tall, each containing one of three different strains of algae. The algae absorbs energy from the sun during the day, sustaining and nourishing it. At night the tubes, which are actually reactors, will be illuminated with bright LED lights, highlighting the red, gold and fluorescent green hues of the different algae strains.
The installation aims to introduce people to the virtues of algae as a sustainable, plentiful, natural resource with a multitude of applications.
Director of the UTS Climate Change Cluster (C3) Professor Peter Ralph also heads Deep Green Biotech Hub (DGBH) which brings together UTS resources and knowledge and entrepreneurial/business interests in a cooperative effort to find solutions using algae.
“I really believe that the potential for algae’s use in a sustainable future is limitless. As we move away from petroleum-based products algae can play a pivotal role in Australia’s clean energy future, and the high value opportunities in medicine, food and nutraceuticals are also exciting and tantalisingly close,” says Prof. Ralph.