Make-Shift Anthropocene Symbiosis Station and Interface for Vibrant Exchange
About / Texts / Contact / Media kit / Find it
About
Project Summary
M.A.S.S.I.V.E. (Make-shift Anthropocene Symbiosis Station and Interface for Vibrant Exchange), was a temporary, mobile sound installation. Built by the City of Kelowna’s 2024 Artist in Residence, Lucas Glenn, it was found in city parks throughout the fall. The interactive project focused on ways that humans ‘interface’ with nonhumans. With two-way radios, salvaged electronics, seeds, texts, and small gestures, M.A.S.S.I.V.E. speculated. In the context of climate emergency, it asked how we might repurpose human-centred objects for symbiotic ends.The installation’s functions were small in spite of its lofty title. Repurposed equipment facilitated visitors in generating modified sounds for plants. Early instances had visitors DJ for a plant via a boombox, selecting from CDs and cassettes to play. And later variations had visitors speaking to a plant over two-way radios.
Devised from a speaker, monitor arm, and tripod, an standing speaker system, broadcast the noise. Feeding the output, daisy-chained guitar pedals isolated the range of audio to 355–500hz. This distorted the sound to frequencies known to encourage plant growth. Flanked by traffic cones, the speaker’s articulated aluminum body and tidy cables appeared, at least form a distance, like an obscure piece of scientific equipment. Instances had the speaker directed at a mature maple tree, a young cottonwood, a patch of yarrow, and an Oregon grape bush.
Glenn was on site to converse with visitors from an outfitted utility trailer, canopied by a modified room divider. The trailer 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 studio shelf, books addressed nature/culture, art, and climate. Scattered throughout the pages of each text were plants seeds, each native to the Okanagan. With and without knowing, readers sowed yarrow, bunchgrass, and wildflower seeds. Visitors borrowed books to sit and walk with, sometimes reading passages through walkie-talkies.
The trailer’s visual footprint— in comparison to the smaller sound component— pointed to the project's hubris. It formed a contrast to the project’s tone of eco-optimism. Like with its title, the artist’s use of scale hoped to question when supports might outweigh a gesture. Energy, material, space, labour, knowledge, and the artist himself connected to form M.A.S.S.I.V.E.’s flawed, but good-natured, support system.
Artist Bio
Lucas Glenn (b. 1992, Winfield, BC) is an emerging artist working in installation, digital media, and drawing. Glenn is interested in attempts to take materials designed for ecological domination and repurpose them as objects for ecological support and care. His work retools imagery, waste, and industrial equipment to create sporty irrigation systems, rugged compost shelters, and detail-rich dioramas. He attributes his resourceful, D.I.Y. approach to his upbringing in small-town BC.Glenn received his BFA from University of British Columbia and his MFA from University of Victoria, where he received awards from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the British Columbia Arts Council. He continues to exhibit independent and collaborative projects throughout Western Canada.
Photo by Asha Hannan. Image courtesy of the artist.
———
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
![]()