Sunlight: YES
2023 • Australia • 49 mins • Documentary

In recent years, tech companies around the world have offered many novel solutions to the looming global food crisis: vertical farms, 3D-printed cakes, lab-grown ice cream, juicy steaks made from nothing but thin air. Courtesy of SymbioticA – the pioneering Australian bio-artists responsible for the world’s first-ever piece of meat grown in a laboratory – we can now add to this burgeoning list the Sunlight, Soil & Shit (De)Cycle (or 3SDC) project. It is claimed to be a groundbreaking technological system that may be able to produce all the food we could ever hope for – and, as its name suggests, without any need for sunlight, soil or shit.

The project is launched at a time when the future of the planet isn’t looking too flash. Temperatures soar. Case numbers skyrocket. Weather systems wreak havoc. A war is waged. Will the public have faith in the 3SDC project? Will anybody invest in it? Can it save us from the mess we’ve found ourselves in?

Guided by AMY – an artificial-intelligence narrator with knowledge to burn – Sunlight: YES documents, contextualises and critiques SymbioticA’s exhibition whilst ruminating on art, science, innovation, stick insects and the state of the world today.