Art Imitating Nature

Haloarchaea (a special type of salt-loving microbes) inspire us all – with their unusual tolerance of many extremes (polyextremophiles), many are beautifully colored, and with many biotechnological applications. For more, check out the DasSarma-laboratory Education and Outreach Web Suite at https://halo-ed.org/.

Beyond the laboratory and education field, Haloarchaea have inspired artists, for example:

The musical composer, Professor Matt Belzer, who is the UMBC Director of the Jazz Studies program and Professor in the Department of Music, describes his composition The Ocean Is A Memory, which had its premiere May,4, 2026, as: “The Ocean has receded and the world is in complete darkness. The Haloarchaea is an ancient immortal being from billions of years ago who has travelled through time in a salt crystal. The crystal creates reflections of sound and light. The water in their enclosure interacts with the reflections. They meditate, chanting. The chanting is answered and reflected by Another which is also Itself. A folk song emerges, becoming brighter over time as the crystal dissolves. The Ocean returns and with it sunlight. Ultimately, the Haloarchaea is carried into the universe where it searches for others like them. This movement was inspired by the amazing research and contributions of Dr. Priya DasSarma and Dr. Shil DasSarma.” Check out his albums: Calling and On The Path and more at https://anansitrio.bandcamp.com/

Some love the color, such as the artist, Michelle Hagewood, who was the first artist-in-resident in the DasSarma lab. One piece even became the cover of the prestigious Journal of Bacteriology: Halophile Quinacridone 202 using acrylic ink, graphite, and pen on Dura-Lar in 2010, and was inspired by the article by DasSarma et al., Genome-wide responses of the model archaeon Halobacterium sp. strain NRC-1 to oxygen limitation in the same issue. She writes that her pieces “came out of an amazing opportunity I had to be an artist-in-residence with the DasSarma Lab at the University of Maryland. They study the Halobacterium sp. NRC-1, “a salt-loving, radiation-resistant, and desiccation-tolerant archaeon that is easy to culture in the lab and genetically tractable.” Zooming in on [nucleotide] strands, learning about protein structures—it was pivotal for me. I processed that experience through these pink and crimson spills and fine drawing, which referenced the presence of these organisms as micro and macro presences. And they were so therapeutic to make. I followed the materials and let my marks and paint pushing become semi-automatic.” “The color is born out of … a special Halobacterium, “a salt-loving, radiation-resistant” archaeal microorganism, which happens to affect this magnificent magenta/purple upon a variety of bodies of water, and might have even dominated the color of the earth when life was at its early stages.”

Visual artists are inspired by the Hypothesis put forth by Dr. Shiladitya DasSarma, known as the Purple Earth Hypothesis (PEH) e.g. Pin Vega’s work, EL SUEÑO DE DASSARMA ( Earth before green), who stated that his “work is a visceral exploration of textures and emotions achieved with pure, highly intense pigments on a resin surface. In symbolic realism, I sought to capture the depth of human experience. Visually, it will draw the eye, infusing … space with an evocative and transformative energy. It is a continuous dialogue between the observer and the intimate expression of color. The title of the work refers to the hypothesis of Shiladitya DasSarma, a prominent molecular biologist and professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. This hypothesis tells us about what the Earth might have been like thousands of years ago, before any microorganisms existed. A purple pigment molecule called 'retinal' would have existed before chlorophyll. This molecule, present .. reflected red and violet light, giving the entire … world a purple hue. Therefore, our planet, seen from above, would have been purple.”

Haloarchaea have also inspired authors such as the SciFi writer, and Professor, Dr. Joan Slonczewski, whose 1986 Campbell Award-winning novel, A Door into Ocean is about an all-female population, whose skin is purple-pigmented, and appear to be using a purple-membrane-type system for energy in an ecosystem of a planet covered entirely by water.