A SYMPHONY OF DISAPPPEARING SOUNDS for the GREAT SALT LAKE

 

Last night I witnessed Olafur Eliasson's "Symphony of Disappearing Sounds for the Great Salt Lake." It's a sonic/visual experience featuring a 30-foot sphere onto which moving patterns are projected. This is accompanied by music composed by Koreless that used field recordings from the Great Salt Lake area. These sounds were digitally manipulated and combined to produce shifting sounds and rhythms in a techno style. I like to think that all of the sounds we heard were derived from field recordings, but I'm not sure whether that's the case. The mood of the audio corresponded to that of the video, giving the audience a coherent and mesmerizing experience, although overall, I don't think the installation really distinguished itself from other similar work.
Although the video images were abstract, many of the projected patterns nicely suggested the natural world: the night sky, the universe, swarming brine flies, migrating birds, schooling fish, bacterial colonies, contours of continents, etc. Much of it, though, suggested things like architecture, electronic circuitry and basketry, which transported the viewer away from the GSL theme. The themes of the lake and the city could have been nicely set up in opposition to one another, but that didn't seem to be suggested by the piece, and I found that enough of it was dominated by angular, anthropogenic-looking imagery to render the whole thing thematically muddy. The musical suffered some from a limited palette, with very little happening harmonically. I think the installation could have taken us to more interesting places had they injected a melodic motif into the composition.
All-in-all, it's an impressive and mesmerizing experience that lasts about a half an hour, and is well worth attending. It will continue every night at 9pm at Memory Grove through Saturday, April 4th. Be sure to get there before it starts.