A GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE: HOW A WAREHOUSE CHANGED THE WAY I SEE MUSEUMS

Museums on Earth | Jordan Fee

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Last month, I had one of the most rewarding museum experiences of my life.

And I wasn’t even in a museum.

In fact, I was in the last place that most people would look to find a museum: in an industrial stockyard. There were no sidewalks, no people, and no signage to tell me where I should be going. Certainly this was neither a temple, nor a forum; it was more like a pilgrimage site that nobody knew about. Luckily, I had the phone number of one of the directors.

Photograph courtesy of Jordan Fee.

Guy Rubino, along with his brother Michael, stand at the helm of this innovative and yet unknown space. A couple of years ago the brothers were contacted by the University of Guelph, who maintains an active partnership with NASA, to aid in a research project about how astronauts can grow food on Mars. Working with lights designed by NASA in a Controlled Environment Systems Research Facility (CESRF) unit built by the College of Agriculture at the University of Guelph, Guy and his brother began to grow vegetables indoors.

How, you might ask, does this relate to museums?

I contend that this space - which is now run solely by the two brothers, along with a team of about 5 people - could be interpreted as a museum of the future. Not to say that this is what museums will look like in the future, but rather, this space provides those who visit with a glance into what communities of the future might look like. Just before I visited the space, Guy and Michael were in fact meeting with a team of developers who were interested in potentially including units like these in apartment buildings around the city.

In other words, this could quite literally be the future of community-based agriculture for those living in urban centres. How many museums do you know that showcase such futuristic potential?

A view inside of the Controlled Environment Systems Research Facility (CESRF). Photo courtesy of Jordan Fee.

From the moment that I stepped into the controlled-environment unit, I was struck by the multi-sensory nature of the space. You could smell rich soil, feel the humidity rest on your skin, see the lights, the seeds, and the plants. I even got the chance to pick some vegetables and taste them on the spot - certainly a unique experience in comparison to those offered by more conventional museums. Constance Classen, a prominent scholar in the field of sensory museology, has written many books about the history of the senses in the built museum environment. Museums today are certainly attempting to create exhibitions that feature more and more interactive elements. Nevertheless, getting to taste these objects allowed for a true "a-ha! moment" where my experience became more than sensorial. At this moment, my experience became transcendental.

Seedlings at the first stage of growth. Photograph courtesy of Jordan Fee.

As we walked through the facility, Guy told me that he always begins his tours of the space with a simple analogy: humans grow just like plants. Starting with the seeds, he leads me down to the end of the chamber where the plants begin their real journey at the adolescent stage. Over the course of three weeks, the plants are subject to a wide variety of coloured lights. These lights simulate the light that the plants would receive from the sun, but each emits only one wavelength (read: colour), thereby adding another element to the visitor’s overall aesthetic experience. Moving along a 1 degree slope, the plants arrive, after just 3 weeks, at the other end of the chamber in their fully realized, adult form.

Arugula in the stages of adulthood. Photograph courtesy of Jordan Fee.

Hearing all of this, I couldn’t help but think about how this space might be used as an educational tool to teach children - amongst other people - about plant growth in a controlled environment. School-children and adults alike could benefit greatly from a visit to one of these centres. They could provide visitors with specific information about plant growth that could not be communicated in such concise terms on a conventional outdoor farm. According to Guy and Michael, contamination would be the biggest risk associated with bringing a large group of people into the space, but there are certainly ways to circumvent this. After all, isn’t the ‘contamination’ of objects through human touch also an issue that exists in museums?

A view of the warehouse space outside of the CESRF unit. A second, larger unit is to be built in this space over the next few years. Photograph courtesy of Jordan Fee. 

So, why should we not call this space a museum? It has a collection (of seeds and plants), it is culturally significant (being the first fully-automated farm in Canada), and it can provide people with knowledge about the processes of plant-growth, light absorption, and the downfalls of conventional agriculture. (Note: something that Guy emphasized to me is that his farm uses only 10 percent of the water that a conventional farm would use. Talk about sustainability!) The space may lack interpretive materials, but it nevertheless achieves a level of political, aesthetic and scientific unity that many museum exhibitions have attempted to capture in the past.

Initially, I thought that the only difference between this space and a museum was that Guy and his brother are now selling these vegetables to restaurants around the city; but do museums not do this as well? Are wealthy patrons not afforded the chance to rent or buy artworks?

The only difference then would be that wealthy art patrons can’t eat what they've bought.