Make-Shift Anthropocene Symbiosis Station and Interface for Vibrant Exchange

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Join us for an open studio and closing reception:

M.A.S.S.I.V.E. has concluded.

Thank you to everyone who visited, participated, and supported the project.

M.A.S.S.I.V.E. (Make-shift Anthropocene Symbiosis Station and Interface for Vibrant Exchange), was a temporary, mobile sound installation. Found in parks throughout fall 2024, it focused on ways that humans and nonhumans 'interface' or communicate. With two-way radios, salvaged electronics, seeds, texts, and small gestures, M.A.S.S.I.V.E. speculated. It asks how we might repurpose human-centred systems for symbiotic ends.

The installation’s functions were small in spite of its lofty title. Installed in parks, it let visitors generate modified sounds for plants. Some installs had visitors DJ for plants via a boombox, selecting CDs and cassette tapes to play. And later installs had visitors speaking to plants over two-way radios. Daisy-chained guitar pedals isolated the audio output to 355–500hz. This distorted the sound to a range known to encourage plant growth. A speaker, mounted to a monitor arm on a tripod, broadcast the noise. Flanked by traffic cones, its articulated aluminum body and tidy cables gave off the look of some scientific technology. Instances had it directed at a mature maple tree, a young cottonwood, a patch of yarrow, and an Oregon grape bush.

The artist was on site to converse with visitors from an outfitted utility trailer, canopied by a room divider. It also served as an off-grid solar power station and reading library. Solar panels recharged the sound sculpture's batteries, and from a trailer side-compartment labelled "Seed library," texts extended the the project's intent. Curated from the artist's shelf, books covered nature/culture, art, and climate. Scattered in the pages of each text were plants seeds, each native to the Okanagan. With and without knowing, readers sowed yarrow, sedges, and wildflower seeds.

The trailer's larger footprint— compared to the sound component— pointed to the project's hubris and contrasted its eco-optimism. Like its title, its relative size questioned if the supports outweighed the gestures. Energy, material, space, labour, knowledge, and the artists himself all connected to form a flawed support system.

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This project takes place on the unceded, ancestral, and traditional territory of the Syilx Nation.

^{Supported by the City of Kelowna Artist in Residence program}