This story mixing music, science and food is probably gonna gross you out, but since there is music involved, in the strangest way, I thought it was interesting to say the least.
The Algae Opera, a project designed by Michael Burton and Michiko Nitta of After Agri, produces a sort of ‘symbiosis’ between an opera singer and an algae. Algae are photosynthetic plants, they grow on carbon dioxide and sunlight, and in this case the carbon dioxide comes from the singer’s breath when she… sings! And why an opera singer? Just because of her large lung capacity, so that she can reject a large quantity of this ordinary gas, which isn’t that abundant in the atmosphere.
Looking at this above picture may make you believe that the whole thing comes straight from a science-fiction novel, but this is for real! Plus the composition of the song and the singer’s vocal technique are specifically redesigned to produce algae and enrich its taste. Effectively, Burton and Nitta think that algae are plants of the future and that we are all gonna feed on it soon, so they have to keep it tasty! Don’t ask me exactly how, but they pretend to have used ‘the new science of sonic enhancement of food where different pitches and frequencies make food taste bitter or sweet’…Whaaaat? Different songs make different-tasting algae? How odd and crazy does this sound, err taste?
‘In the age of biotechnology not only can the audience listen to her talent but they can also savor her unique blend of algae that are enriched by her song’, they said about their unique project. I have so many questions after reading about this, could we do that for any song that exist, and determine if a song is sweet, salty, bitter?… Do sad songs taste better than happy songs or vice versa? Are we going to eat songs after each concert in the future? Has the term ‘starving musician’ become obsolete? Or is it a total joke? Wait a minute, I hate algae, can’t stand their weird taste and I am not ready to eat some tiny green plant fed by some woman’s breathe! I am all for science, but this is simply disgusting.