Olafur Eliasson Uses Art and Sound to Raise Climate Awareness in Utah

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By Farah Nayeri, The New York Times. 

Excerpt: Olafur Eliasson shook up the contemporary art scene in 2003 when he installed a glowing replica of the sun inside London’s Tate Modern and watched visitors flock to it as if to the nearest beach. Recently, another of Eliasson’s outsized spheres drew large crowds, this time in Salt Lake City, Utah: a towering, globe-shaped screen which, night after night, beamed sounds and images illustrating the ecological threats faced by the Great Salt Lake and its ecosystem. To make the installation (titled “A symphony of disappearing sounds for the Great Salt Lake”), the Danish Icelandic artist teamed up with the music producer Koreless to create a soundtrack using sounds (collected by archivists) made by more than 150 local animal species — including bison, coyotes, frogs, pelicans and rattlesnakes — which he has paired with abstract images inspired by crystalline shapes and motifs in nature. The Great Salt Lake is in peril: Nearly two-thirds of the lake bed is currently exposed, and the rest could soon follow, wiping out dozens of species that rely on it for survival.... 

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