November 2014 · Process
On the carbon-mitigation mojito
A cocktail is a strange place to put a research finding. Notes from the opening night of Inhale : Exhale at the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation — and on the persistent strategy of using food as a Trojan horse for science.
The cocktail was simple: white rum, lime, mint, sugar — and a measured dose of chlorella, the freshwater algae that has been a quiet workhorse of the studio for the last few years. Each glass came with a small card explaining how much atmospheric carbon the chlorella in your drink had, in its short life, removed from the air.
There is a version of this work that would be insufferable. The version we tried to make, with Allison Pallenske through [Dinner]Lab, was the opposite — a piece that gave you something cold and sharp to drink before it asked you anything at all.
The petri-dish wall behind the bar was prepared in collaboration with the Evolutionary Biology Department at the University of Edinburgh. Watching strangers lean in to read the dishes after their second mojito remains one of the most useful evenings of fieldwork I have had.