�鶹��Ƶ

A small, angular beacon rests in your hand. As you move through your city, it changes colour. You know that as it does so, it’s telling you something. Because there are other beacons out there, in hands a lot like yours.

Growing dimmer means you’ve gotten further away from those other beacons. Colours change depending on how many others are nearby. A brighter gleam shows you’re getting closer to one another. When all gathered together in one place, the beacons will glow bright white.

For artist (MFA 2015), bringing this dreamlike scene to life has been the work of years. And as , the project will finally find a public audience; beginning at the end of August, Melany’s latest participatory artwork, When it is necessary to stand still, will see 25 beacons distributed to participants in the lakeside city for ten separate three-day “activations.”

Once in possession of a beacon, participants will interact with the object as they please. Wandering around Kelowna, they’ll find their beacon glowing or dimming as they grow nearer or more distant from fellow participants. Melany says the extraordinary openness of this proposition fosters a kind of intimacy between a person and their beacon, and between beacon-holders.

“In a way it's a really simple project: these beacons change colour,” she says. “But in my experience, people really emotionally connect with them. Then there’s community engagement and community capacity building. So, it works on the level of the individual, the level of community, and then possibly on an interpersonal level.”

Melany’s hedging on any definitive claim that participation guarantees one-on-one interactions stems from her acknowledgment that “people may just want to engage with it as a lamp.” And for her, giving participants agency to engage or disengage is part of the premise.

“Really, it's a conceptual game. People are carrying these beacons around. Even the shape of them, they're like game pieces,” she says. “But also, the context allows people to step out of their routine, gives them agency to look beyond their typical boundaries, and maybe do things or talk to someone who’s in the game, which they may not necessarily do in their day-to-day. They’re given permission for some sort of agency.”

The work began during Melany’s MFA studies at Emily Carr University, where she says �鶹��Ƶ associate professor Justin Langlois was key in helping her develop the project. Its earliest iterations were conducted as a research project called . But the upcoming activation as part of Kelo