WEBVTT 00:00:11.575 --> 00:00:12.800 MARK DION: I'm very much 00:00:12.800 --> 00:00:15.394 an artist who gets a lot from things. 00:00:16.300 --> 00:00:18.651 I really love the world of stuff. 00:00:19.720 --> 00:00:23.400 I am constantly out there buying  things going to flea markets 00:00:23.400 --> 00:00:25.674 and yard sales and junk stores 00:00:26.720 --> 00:00:30.332 and I like to surround myself with  things that are inspirational. 00:00:32.800 --> 00:00:35.320 Some artists paint, some sculpt, 00:00:35.320 --> 00:00:36.320 some take photographs 00:00:36.320 --> 00:00:37.320 and I shop 00:00:37.320 --> 00:00:38.941 and that's what I do. 00:00:40.080 --> 00:00:41.580 Sometimes those things stay in the barn 00:00:41.580 --> 00:00:43.960 and sometimes they enter into my every day life 00:00:43.960 --> 00:00:47.129 and sometimes they become part  of a sculpture, an installation. 00:00:48.477 --> 00:00:51.040 I really identify with the mission of the museum 00:00:51.040 --> 00:00:54.157 where you go to gain knowledge through things 00:00:55.249 --> 00:00:58.320 and I think that that's a mission that's  very close to what sculpture is about 00:00:58.320 --> 00:00:59.920 and what installation is about 00:01:01.640 --> 00:01:04.206 and what for me contemporary art is about. 00:01:08.700 --> 00:01:10.520 I am not looking for the newest museum. 00:01:10.520 --> 00:01:12.280 I am always looking for the oldest museum. 00:01:12.280 --> 00:01:17.800 I'm looking for museums that are very much  a kind of window into the past in a sense. 00:01:21.240 --> 00:01:26.864 You really get an idea of what people thought  about the natural world at a particular time. 00:01:28.840 --> 00:01:32.296 Their obsessions, their  sensibilities, their prejudices. 00:01:37.240 --> 00:01:42.295 All of my ideas start here, with  writing and drawing and sketches, 00:01:43.225 --> 00:01:46.695 both conceptual and practical. 00:01:47.160 --> 00:01:50.406 There are a lot of tools that the artist  has that the scientist doesn't have. 00:01:51.080 --> 00:01:57.028 Humor, irony, metaphor these are the  sort of bread and butter of artists. 00:02:30.880 --> 00:02:35.651 This work is about the introduction  of rats to Puffin Island, 00:02:36.320 --> 00:02:39.265 which is an island off the coast of Wales, 00:02:40.520 --> 00:02:43.240 as people started increasingly  to visit the island, 00:02:43.240 --> 00:02:44.617 rats kind of tagged along 00:02:46.360 --> 00:02:51.600 and soon the puffin colony was entirely destroyed. 00:03:02.040 --> 00:03:07.978 Tar has been used as a kind of form of  punishment and retribution since the Middle Ages. 00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:14.080 It's this sort of natural material  that has this history of a… 00:03:14.080 --> 00:03:16.323 as a kind of expression of intolerance. 00:03:18.880 --> 00:03:22.800 In the states, people used to tar  the bodies of pirates and convicts 00:03:22.800 --> 00:03:28.120 who were executed so the corpses would  last longer to function as a warning. 00:03:28.910 --> 00:03:32.400 In the middle ages, boiling  tar was used to defend cities. 00:03:32.400 --> 00:03:33.760 They threw it from the parapets 00:03:33.760 --> 00:03:41.228 so there's all sorts of associations  with tar and of history of intolerance. 00:04:17.240 --> 00:04:24.120 I'm not one of these artists who is spending a  lot of time imagining a better ecological future. 00:04:24.120 --> 00:04:28.477 I'm more the kind of artist who is  holding up a mirror to the present. 00:04:29.593 --> 00:04:31.200 We're at this kind of moment in time where 00:04:31.200 --> 00:04:34.096 we have a great test ahead of us 00:04:34.840 --> 00:04:38.320 in terms of our relationship to the natural world. 00:04:38.320 --> 00:04:41.077 If we pass the test, we get to keep the planet. 00:04:41.960 --> 00:04:45.312 But I don't really see us doing a  very good job of that right now. 00:04:49.240 --> 00:04:51.040 I'm not really interested in nature. 00:04:51.040 --> 00:04:53.280 I'm interested in ideas about nature. 00:04:53.280 --> 00:04:57.040 That's really what my work is  about, is examining those ideas– 00:04:57.040 --> 00:05:00.721 where do they come from, what's  the historical groundwork for them? 00:05:01.767 --> 00:05:03.800 I think for myself and for a number of artists, 00:05:03.800 --> 00:05:06.840 science really functions as our worldview. 00:05:06.840 --> 00:05:08.880 I mean our relationship to  science is very much like 00:05:08.880 --> 00:05:12.008 a Renaissance artists relationship to theology. 00:05:13.240 --> 00:05:16.080 That's really what I see as the  primary job of contemporary art 00:05:16.080 --> 00:05:20.222 is to function as a critical  foil to dominate culture. 00:05:22.360 --> 00:05:26.495 We're now outside of Seattle  in protected watershed area 00:05:27.680 --> 00:05:32.160 and this is where the tree is coming  from for the SEATTLE VIVARIUM. 00:05:32.160 --> 00:05:39.421 It's a very large hemlock tree which fell  on the evening of February 8th, 1996. 00:05:41.350 --> 00:05:45.680 In some way I want to  acknowledge the wonder of just 00:05:45.680 --> 00:05:49.656 the vast complexity and diversity  within a natural system. 00:06:19.490 --> 00:06:22.621 We'll have the real soil that  came from around the tree. 00:06:23.760 --> 00:06:27.080 We'll have some of the mosses, some of the ferns, 00:06:27.080 --> 00:06:29.560 some of the simple plants, lots of the fungi. 00:06:40.640 --> 00:06:45.040 There's all kinds of other stuff in here of  course that's fallen from the forest canopy 00:06:45.040 --> 00:06:46.720 and is trapped in here. 00:06:46.720 --> 00:06:48.560 So we might have hemlock seeds, 00:06:48.560 --> 00:06:52.632 or a whole variety of things  that are already in this moss. 00:06:56.560 --> 00:06:59.920 On the tree is the basis of the next forest. 00:06:59.920 --> 00:07:03.922 The tree supports a living biosystem within it. 00:07:13.360 --> 00:07:16.600 There is an aspect of this piece  that is optimistic in a sense. 00:07:16.600 --> 00:07:19.143 The tree is giving life through its death. 00:07:46.080 --> 00:07:48.400 That's part of the excitement of piece: 00:07:48.400 --> 00:07:50.388 once it's finished, it's just starting. 00:08:08.680 --> 00:08:10.400 In a sense what I'm doing is, 00:08:10.400 --> 00:08:13.620 I'm bringing a forgotten element of  the environment back into the city. 00:08:13.620 --> 00:08:17.360 I'm taking something that would have  existed here a very long time ago 00:08:17.360 --> 00:08:19.000 and I'm returning it to that site, 00:08:19.000 --> 00:08:20.924 almost a kind of reminder. 00:08:40.280 --> 00:08:44.320 In order to protect the tree  from the heat of days like this, 00:08:44.320 --> 00:08:46.040 we need to build a shelter for it. 00:08:46.040 --> 00:08:47.408 That's going to be one of our big jobs, 00:08:49.360 --> 00:08:51.240 not only putting the tree in place today, 00:08:51.240 --> 00:08:55.720 but also we have to build a structure  around is going to shield it from the sun 00:08:55.720 --> 00:08:59.440 so we're not killing off all the communities  that this place is meant to foster. 00:09:03.480 --> 00:09:05.120 When you're working on a project like this, 00:09:05.120 --> 00:09:06.840 it's really like directing a film. 00:09:06.840 --> 00:09:09.920 We worked with advisors, with soil scientists, 00:09:09.920 --> 00:09:11.920 with biologists, and with architects. 00:09:11.920 --> 00:09:14.324 So there's a huge team of people. 00:09:17.160 --> 00:09:19.425 I want to see here how it's going to line up. 00:09:21.680 --> 00:09:24.400 Once we get it down, we're not  going to ever move it again. 00:09:24.400 --> 00:09:29.360 It has to fit the building perfectly so  it's really necessary that we get it right. 00:09:46.000 --> 00:09:49.920 This is a piece that really  is in some way perverse. 00:09:51.811 --> 00:09:54.400 It really shows that despite  all of our technology, 00:09:54.400 --> 00:09:57.600 despite all of our money, when  we destroy a natural system, 00:09:57.600 --> 00:09:59.320 it's virtually impossible to get it back. 00:10:05.280 --> 00:10:09.200 It's an incredibly interesting hybrid  space that we're putting this tree into, 00:10:09.200 --> 00:10:10.840 which is something like a showroom, 00:10:10.840 --> 00:10:12.120 something like a classroom, 00:10:12.120 --> 00:10:13.982 and something like a laboratory. 00:10:17.120 --> 00:10:21.840 It's really exciting to see the  culmination of five years of research, 00:10:21.840 --> 00:10:28.018 planning, compromising, and finally  have some kind of triumph in a way. 00:10:32.080 --> 00:10:36.751 I worked a lot on designing the building to  have a particular kind of forced perspective. 00:10:38.680 --> 00:10:42.200 It's a triangular building and you  enter through the nose of the triangle, 00:10:42.200 --> 00:10:43.840 the narrowest point. 00:10:43.840 --> 00:10:45.920 When you walk through those doors, 00:10:45.920 --> 00:10:48.160 you are in a very different kind of place– 00:10:48.160 --> 00:10:50.000 a really fantastical place. 00:10:51.160 --> 00:10:54.863 I wanted to have this Alice  through the rabbit hole effect. 00:10:57.280 --> 00:11:01.480 I'm trying to motivate through  a sense of the marvelous, 00:11:01.480 --> 00:11:04.257 through a sense of the wonderful. 00:11:09.800 --> 00:11:11.640 This is not a natural space. 00:11:11.640 --> 00:11:15.234 This is really a very particular  kind of garden that we're making. 00:11:22.280 --> 00:11:26.840 We have this incredible apparatus  of a water catchment system, 00:11:26.840 --> 00:11:30.108 and irrigation system, cooling systems, 00:11:31.200 --> 00:11:33.452 panels to control the light levels. 00:11:34.080 --> 00:11:38.289 The glass to replicate the color  spectrum that you have under the canopy. 00:11:39.800 --> 00:11:45.949 We've really tried to highlight the  difficulty of replicating what nature can do. 00:11:53.440 --> 00:11:56.984 A number of tiles have been produced  by local wildlife illustrators. 00:11:58.034 --> 00:12:06.877 On those tiles are the organisms that live  in on and around the tree, lovingly depicted. 00:12:11.200 --> 00:12:13.092 Here are some of the early drawings. 00:12:13.720 --> 00:12:17.960 There's also one of the schemes for  the rainwater harvesting system. 00:12:17.960 --> 00:12:22.944 There are some of the tools that we  used in our collecting expeditions. 00:12:24.920 --> 00:12:28.200 I wanted to make something that would  exist over a long period of time 00:12:28.200 --> 00:12:31.080 that people could come to and they  could bring their children to, 00:12:31.080 --> 00:12:33.800 and their children could bring their children to. 00:12:33.800 --> 00:12:38.734 Every time you walk through the door, you are  experiencing something a little bit different. 00:12:40.800 --> 00:12:45.675 That was really my goal in this piece,  to emphasize nature as a process. 00:12:47.860 --> 00:12:52.607 I really expect that you leave this place maybe  with more questions then when you come in. 00:12:55.280 --> 00:12:57.960 One of the interesting things  about being part of the park 00:12:57.960 --> 00:13:04.034 is that you know here there are  these amazing masters of sculpture. 00:13:07.480 --> 00:13:09.301 That's a lot to live up to. 00:13:10.440 --> 00:13:13.200 For me it's a little bit of  an intimidating situation, 00:13:13.200 --> 00:13:15.640 but it also really did raise the bar for me 00:13:15.640 --> 00:13:17.561 when I was thinking about  what I wanted to do here. 00:13:19.560 --> 00:13:22.160 This is a work of art dealing  with a lot of the same issues, 00:13:22.160 --> 00:13:24.222 but with a very different toolbox. 00:13:28.243 --> 00:13:33.067 Making a piece like this, it's like having  a kid this is a lifetime commitment. 00:13:34.520 --> 00:13:38.560 It's a living artwork and we have  to be responsive to that dynamic. 00:13:38.560 --> 00:13:40.164 It's exciting.