(Silver Lake Operations #1, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia, 2007. Photo by Edward Burtynkski.)

Instead of an arboretum of indigenous flora as at Pedreres de s'Hostal, for this copper mine in Western Australia, how about an extraterrestrial garden of phytoremediating plants, both the unmodified and the genetically modified kinds, with gorgeously red- and orange-hued pools of metal-eating microogranisms?

Or you plant this ecosystem in all the disused open pits everywhere except here, where you merely design a circulation system interspersed with “educational signs” and some observation platforms — a masterpiece of topographical mapping, pictorial analysis and narrative making? Or you can scratch all that, and the only intervention you do involves installing a marker near the entrance, for instance, a cairn. How about Las Vegas neon marquee because beyond lies a terrestrial extravaganza? What routes people take inside will be up to them.

Or how about just a set of coordinate rendered perfectly on Google Maps' well-designed web interface? Should anyone want to visit the mine, at least they know where it is on the surface of the earth.