Algae

'The dream no longer opens onto a blue distance. It has turned grey. The grey layer of dust covering things has become their best part.' 1

When a fish tank is contaminated with too much light from the exterior world, dark green algae grows on its inner surfaces. Slowly the crystal clear glass that insured that what resided inside was safe for contemplation, is infested and its exterior surface comes into view, as the dream within fades out. The dark green tank now resonates with the memory of its lost splendour. The algae brings this engineered microcosm back into the natural world, reconnecting it with its external setting, and in this transition it is empowered with new meaning, like the echo in a fossil, an allegory of memory.

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1. Benjamin, Walter. Dreamkitsch, Frankfurt, 1966, vol. 2 pp. 158-60