Jan-Erik Andersson with Vesa Alanko and Kalle Halminen, Ari Haasiosalo, Mikko Itkonen: Flower Power Seed Cannon, 2018. In a private collection.
This cannon is made to produce peace and to fertilize the earth with new flowers and grasses. Vesa Alanko approached me and asked if I wanted to design a cannon for him. He wanted to delight his guests with a surprising sculpture. His friends Kalle Halminen, Ari Haasiosalo and Mikko Itkonen had developed a compressed air-based cannon-system, for which he wanted a sculptural outlook.
I told him that if this is a cannon which produces peace, I would be interested and I threw him the idea, that it would be a flower looking cannon shooting out seeds to fertilize the earth with more flowers and grasses, to help the falling populations of bees and other insects. He liked the idea and the result can be experienced in the video.
The cannon functions not only on the symbolical level. First a tennis-ball is inserted in the pipes, then seeds are poured in and after that a small amount of water is put on the top. Then the cannon fires and seeds are spread out all around. The tennis-balls are collected and reused.