Siphons and Squeezes is a WIP project I started developing during an artist residency at WelcHome in Vietnam in October 2024. Exploring the subject of AI driven enzyme discovery for dealing with climate issues like microplastics, it uses simple physics, natural chemical reactions and digital interactions to make a playful installation that asks the question ‘What if we engineered an enzyme that turned plastic into water?’

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Microplastics are now so pervasive they have been found lodged in nearly every human organ. Unlike glass or metal, plastic’s molecular complexity limits its ability to be recycled—after just a few cycles, it degrades into lower-quality material that eventually becomes waste.

One of the most promising solutions for this problem is the discovery and engineering of plastic ‘eating’ enzyme that digest PET (the polymer in most single-use plastics), breaking it down into its basic components. 25 years ago, scientists believed there were fewer than 10 million species of microbes. Today, some estimates put the number as high as one trillion, with the vast majority still unknown. One of the sources for these microbes could be in environments like Vietnam’s mangroves, which have adapted to survive in extreme conditions.

However, the challenge of unlocking the potential of these microbes is complex. The sheer diversity of microbial species and their enzymes requires advanced tools to explore and understand. Which is why researchers are using highly sophisticated LLMs like Deep Mind’s AlphaFold, to identify patterns and connections that might otherwise go unnoticed. Through protein folding predictions, allowing scientists to understand how enzymes function on a structural level and helping researchers understand what individual proteins do and how they interact with other molecules.

It’s a beautiful example of what Donna Haraway calls “tentacular thinking”—a decentralized, interconnected approach to problems that include both human and non-human actors. Most of the activity is currently focused on enzymes that can transform PET into other high quality plastic products which is certainly a valuable exercise.

But through this project, I’ve been trying to imagine a future in which microbial world, paired with AI, offers us the tools transform plastic from a problem to be managed into a material that can be undone, dissolved back into the environment as harmless water and air.