Dante Guthrie

Children of hell, 2019.

Bio: Dante Guthrie is an artist living and working in Montreal. He completed a BFA in Photography at Concordia in 2019, but was more concerned with sculpture and installation by that time. For the last couple of years he has been appropriating popular figures from science-fiction in metal casting. His interest lies in the failures of modern science and how we fictionalize history to support contemporary institutions.

About the artwork: “We propose that retinal-based phototrophy arose early in the evolution of life on Earth,profoundly impacting the development of photosynthesis and creating implications for the searchfor life beyond our planet. While the early evolutionary history of phototrophy is largely in therealm of the unknown, the onset of oxygenic photosynthesis in primitive cyanobacteriasignificantly altered the Earth's atmosphere by contributing to the rise of oxygen ~2.3 billionyears ago. However, photosynthetic chlorophyll and bacteriochlorophyll pigments lackappreciable absorption at wavelengths about 500-600 nm, an energy-rich region of the solarspectrum. By contrast, simpler retinal-based light-harvesting systems such as the haloarchaealpurple membrane protein bacteriorhodopsin show a strong well-defined peak of absorbancecentered at 568 nm, which is complementary to that of chlorophyll pigments. We propose ascenario where simple retinal-based light-harvesting systems like that of the purplechromoprotein bacteriorhodopsin, originally discovered in halophilic Archaea, may havedominated prior to the development of photosynthesis. We explore this hypothesis, termed the'Purple Earth,' and discuss how retinal photopigments may serve as remote biosignatures forexoplanet research.”

DasSarma, S., & Schwieterman, E. (n.d.). Early evolution of purple retinal pigments on Earthand implications for exoplanet biosignatures. International Journal of Astrobiology
 
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