You see a light.
I didn't know the sky was so big.
Your mind, for the first time, is never ready for what you see.
We could just take it in.
All points of origin for everything that we know is the energetic event called light
in which the universe was created.
I used the material light to affect, or work, the medium of perception.
It has a lot to do with, first of all, sensing light.
There's the light outside that he makes physical, but the end result is an awareness somehow
of our light inside.
I think it would be virtually impossible not to come through this space and not be transformed by it.
You don't look at light the same way again.
James Turrell never really made a traditional painting or sculpture.
And he talks a lot about light being his medium, light and perception.
Light led him to think about how light can be in a space.
He was in his studio in Santa Monica, and, as the story goes, this was a studio where
he'd cut apertures into the studio and let light in.
He was kicked out of his studio, and he crisscrossed the western United States
looking for a butte or a volcano.
This is the volcano that he found.
It's called Roden Crater.
You take one of these volcanic craters, you bore a hole through it,
you turn it into a telescope.
You make the telescope a natural object, unpowered by lenses, and you then allow that object
to then interact with the light of the universe around us.
James constructed this by positioning it geometrically in a way where the lunar and solar orbits
are such that he can get 4,000 years of use of this place.
Roden Crater is about a mile and a half in diameter, to give you a sense of the scale,
and James for the last 40-some years has been sculpting the rim of the crater to create
this experience of celestial vaulting.
But he's also been creating and has envisioned 23 different spaces and chambers.
It's by one artist but it's too big for that artist to build himself in this case.
And one of the challenges has been to create a structure for patronage.
And James Turrell and the project's been lucky that over the years a few people have been
here and said, "Oh, my, this is not like anything else.
We should support this."
Our university is working to throw off the constraints of the past structurally,
throw off the constraints of the past intellectually and then engage in these new ways of thinking,
engage light, art, science, culture, nature, all at once.
So our university and where we're headed is very much connected to the whole spirit of
Roden Crater, the whole spirit of James Turrell and what he's trying to do, and this is an
empowering moment for us, because now we're finding other ways in which the university
of the future's being built.
We're colliding these two things together in a way where we're going to get a positive synergy
out of these two organizations taking on this project for the indefinite future.
There really is no other example that I can think of of an artwork that becomes the centerpiece
of creating a whole new way of thinking, a whole new educational model.
That over time, as more people engage with it, can make significant institutional change
and impact the planet and the world we live in.
This is not always satisfactory because often people who are buying art want treasure.
We do love treasure.
We love things.
But I actually love the thing-ness of light itself.
You can't take anything home.
The concrete's here, the stone is here, the sky stays here.
But you take that well-being, that understanding with you.
And I think that's what our time is all about right now.
Everybody has an idea they want to put in the world.
What's the invitation to add your idea to the world?
And can Roden Crater, can James Turrell, be that invitation?
I think it can be.
I'm very happily providing here, you know, at the end of the tunnel, a light at the end
of the tunnel that then provides you with a golden stairway into the sky.
That has a lot to do with what I've wanted to see and wanted to experience
during the conscious awake state, during this lifetime.
Everyone talks about this in the future.
People talk about, you know, what comes after life, all that sort of thing.
Well, I'd like to see it now.
So I'm just making my own kind of slight heaven on earth.