A particularly colourful drink infused with red bubbles not only combines art and science, but now also science and politics!

Bettina Martin, Minister for Science, Culture, Federal and European Affairs in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, recently joined the Greifswald University research team from the collaborative research centre in toasting the newly launched joint project ‘CONCENTRATE’ – with an algae cocktail!

The research project focuses on dealing with the consequences of climate change. One of the scientists involved, Dr Marie-Katherin Zühlke, is also part of the artistic-scientific exhibition project ‘Metabolat’, which was presented at the Koeppenhaus Greifswald in the summer.

Dr Marie-Katherin Zühlke has now been working for a good two years in an interdisciplinary context together with the artist Susanne Gabler from Wismar and myself, Astrid Brünner, to develop potential at the interfaces between art and science. We have successfully managed to bring scientific content to a wide audience through performative art formats. The drink in question plays a special role in this. The amusing algae cocktail premiered in July this year in one of our lecture performances entitled ‘unsweet candy – Molecular cuisine with algae sugars’.

A lecture performance is a presentation in which a topic is explained vividly with the help of performative elements. In this case, scientific research on the use of algae sugars was presented. We are all the more pleased that the trick of illustrating the conversion process of algae sugars in such an appetising way is now being used in a scientific context and supporting connections to other areas.

Photos: Julia Piehl