The object under discussion sits at the heart of the Eden Project, the massive eco-tourist
attraction and education centre just north of St. Austell in Cornwall.
Eden’s giant biodome enclosures house
thousands of plant species and recreate the climate conditions of the tropical rain forests,
the Mediterranean, and other regions.
Outside the domes, botanical gardens overflow with English flora.
The clear intent is to
provide visitors with a unique experience, a greater appreciation of ecology, and
an understanding of human interactions with the natural world.
But when I think of our
fall 2018 day on the site, the first images popping into my mind
are those of the art installations like the dinosaur dropping.
Perhaps because you
expect to see the plants, trees, and the iconic domes, you are
struck by those other, unanticipated structures: the many odd, but intriguing sculptures
line the pathways and exterior gardens. You pass an umbrella of tree roots, a labyrinth encased in willow
branches, a giant bee, horses made out of driftwood, and a hanging stone
xylophone.
But the most striking works had to
be those inside the buildings. One labeled
“Seed” looks like a giant bumpy egg. It
weighs seventy tonnes and was carved from a single piece of granite to mimic the
growth pattern found on sunflowers, pine cones, and ammonite fossils. Unless you are a perceptive biologist or had
prior information, you might not get this connection at first glance.
But this may be the point.
But this may be the point.
Big arresting
works of art like this cause mental mortals like me to ask “What the Flora ?”
and this can, in turn, lead to actual learning. In the case of the bumpy egg, I learned that
the pattern covering it is called the Fibonacci
Spiral, has an important environmental purpose and is more common in nature
than you might think.
Another of Eden’s
sculptures that finds its way into many cellphone photo libraries is that of a
life-size raging bull surrounded by a troupe of writhing, semi-clad figures.
The bull represents Dionysus, the Greek god of the vines known to the Romans as
Bacchus. He and his followers get
carried away with fruit fermented at the hands of humans. Again, after the initial confusion and
curiosity, I learned that the installation tries to remind Eden visitors of the
need for balance in human interaction with nature and perhaps the benefits of appropriate
clothing.
But as intriguing as
these works are, they all seem modest next to the one I likened to steamy
dung. The giant crimpled, ceramic sculpture
is called Infinity Blue; it belches vapour
rings out in regular intervals and looks weird.
Though Blue attracted lots of touching
and attention on the day of our visit and has a kind of magnetic presence, he
still makes you wonder what the artist was thinking.
Fortunately, signage
and printed materials answer the question, explaining that the big blue blob honours
something tiny, the organism called cyanobacteria. Cynobacteria’s ancestors began burping out oxygen
billions of years ago to induce the evolutionary process that led to Michele
and me and the millions of others who have visited the Eden Project over the
years.
Even though sculptures
like belching Blue stick in my mind,
there is no question that the real attraction of the Eden project remains the varied
plant life and mix of environments inside the huge domes.
It was a lot to take
in.
So, we rested at the
end of the day in the Eden Project cafeteria trying to absorb it all, sipping
more tea, and eating Cornish pasties.
Looking at the pastry half-circle
blob, smelling its steamy veggie contents, and touching its crimped-edge
handle, I thought again of the consequences of human interaction with nature, of
the merits of pausing to consider them good and bad, and of the message that is
the sum of the anticipated and unanticipated parts of the Eden Project.
October 2018
