A MONUMENTAL IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE OF THREATENED WORLD SPECIES
Portraits of threatened species creates a cutting edge video art installation
engaging human beings in an emotional, sensory, biophilic experience.
Get eye to eye with some of the world’s rarest creatures.
WHAT WE SEE
WHAT WE KNOW
CLIMATE AND SPECIES PRESERVATION IS THE PERFECT COGNITIVE STORM
Cognitive science tells us that humans cannot process problems that are long-term, invisible, and that have delayed consequences.
The loss of biodiversity is this kind of problem.
Human neural pathways are not effected by facts about invisible threats but by emotions about visible threats.
Behavior is changed by impacts to our primary cognitive system, the immediate, the visual, the immersive.
WHAT WE THINK
ART HAS THE POWER
By engaging the brain’s primary response system, visual art has the power to alter our emotions and so alter our decisions.
An immersive video art experience that engages the visual, audial, olfactory, and spatial senses has the power to develop a new cognitive pathway for understanding the interconnectedness of life.
The Tree of Life seeks to create a new heuristic in the cultural consciousness.
THE EXPERIENCE ECONOMY HAS ARRIVED
Outernet in December 2023 announced that it recorded 6.25 million visitors in its first year of operation in London, while the British Museum attracted 5.83 million visitors in 2023.
teamLab Borderless, which first opened as a permanent museum in Tokyo in June 2018, has set the Guinness World Record for the world’s most visited museum dedicated to a single group or artist.
The teamLab attraction – where visitors interact with ever-changing light sculptures – welcomed a record 2,198,284 visitors between January 1, 2019 to December 31, 2019.
WHAT WE FEEL
A SINGLE WORK
By integrating the best of what ART does and the best of what SCIENCE does we can address both science’s and art’s problems.
The Tree of Life brings three disciplines together seamlessly to forge a new pathway to understanding biodiversity on earth and the interconnectedness of life.
Changing minds, changing culture.
WHAT WE HEAR
The way to people’s hearts is through their eyes.
I support The Tree of Life project because it seeks a way to people’s hearts as a way to raise public awareness and save species.
There can be no greater mission: This is about the future of life on Earth, and the kind of planet we all want to live in.
JOEL SARTORE
Founder, National Geographic Photo Ark
The Tree of Life project is a striking and effective example of the blending of science and the creative arts, each of the two promoting innovation in the other for the benefit of world biodiversity.
EO Wilson
EO Wilson Biodiversity Foundation
Harvard University
Both science and art are built on a foundation of curiosity. But science can only go so far. We really on the arts to connect people with these species and their stories on a much more emotional level. The Tree of Life project is an initiative that is going to connect with a broad audience on a very visceral level. It’s going to move the needle.
Robin Moore
National Geographic Photographer
Re:wild
Attention opens the door to action, but the neurologic signature of emotional resonance causes people to act. Emotional resonance is nonbinary; it varies millisecond by millisecond, and when it reaches a crescendo, people take action. Emotion is what drives decisions.
Paul Zak, PhD
Immersion
WHAT WE USE
CUTTING EDGE TECHNOLOGY
In a collaboration with Emmy and Academy Award winning VFX companies, and a neuroscience lab, we are developing a model that responds to visitors.
Realtime compositing, playback and interactivity tools so that animals in the wall will detect nearby faces and turn to face them.
Spatial Audio that changes as visitors approach from chaos to clarity
Scents that work with the lighting and environmental changes on screen
Ceiling light scrim with timed changes to mimic color on the video wall
Total run time of an hour
No single moment will be repeated
