What would animals that rely on the Great Salt Lake say? An internationally renowned artist's answer in light and sound
For 10 nights starting Thursday evening (March 26), an exhibit at Memory Grove Park in Salt Lake City will take viewers on a visual and auditory journey to the Great Salt Lake.
The sounds of brine flies, bison, snowy plovers and 100 other species connected to the lake will coalesce in what the Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson describes as a parliament of sorts, “as if there was an orchestra of all these animals sort of playing together,” Eliasson said this week.
The sounds will be accompanied with lights, colors and patterns inspired by the lake, displayed on a 40-ish-foot tall elevated sphere. The temporary art, commissioned as part of Salt Lake City’s Wake the Great Salt Lake program, will be on display March 26-April 4. Shows start at 9 p.m. and last 30 minutes. The performance is free though an RSVP is advised and includes details on parking.
Eliasson’s work, called A symphony of disappearing sounds for the Great Salt Lake, is meant to create a place where the audience can come together in celebration, Eliasson told members of the Great Salt Lake Collaborative in a news briefing.
The vibe won’t be too dissimilar from a dance club, he said.
(Courtesy Studio Olafur Eliasson) A visualization of artist Olafur Eliasson's work called "A symphony of disappearing sounds for the Great Salt Lake" which will be on display for free at Memory Grove Park from March 26 to April 4.
“While we are in an environmental crisis and while we are falling short of, should I say, delivering the right results, I do think that joy can be a part of a way of campaigning,” he said.
Eliasson is known for his public installations such as a glowing indoor sun at Tate Modern in London, artificial waterfalls in New York City and glacial ice brought to Copenhagen, Paris and London to bring attention to climate change. This is his first project in the Intermountain West.
(Courtesy Studio Olafur Elisson) Olafur Eliasson in Iceland in 2025.
For the Great Salt Lake project, he said he was inspired while thinking about the rights of nature movement that is meant to recognize ecosystems having rights to exist. And it recalls his 2021 work that imagines an assembly of various animal species and earth’s elements in an assembly like the United Nations.
“I also just like the conceptual notion … of a kind of a collective voice,” he said. In the Great Salt Lake piece, “the whole nature is kind of unifying and singing to you. The notion I hope to finally arrive at is: What would nature actually say, or how would they say it? And I think they would speak with positivity or joy.”
Early in his career, Eliasson visited Spiral Jetty at the Great Salt Lake. For this piece, he didn’t visit the lake but instead contemplated what humans need in order to be moved to act.
“I'm very curious about how scientists speak their science and how they speak their data, how the politicians talk about numbers and so on and so forth, and why does that not really actually motivate?"
Motivation, he said, "requires you either being out in nature or nature coming into where you are. So this work of art here is a kind of attempt to bridge that gap.”
He will attend the opening of A symphony of disappearing sounds for the Great Salt Lake and a panel discussion the night before at the Salt Lake City Main Library at 6:30 p.m. An RSVP is required.
