Olafur Eliasson Creates Waterfalls for New York City
The Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has become famous to the general public with The Weather Project at London’s Tate Modern. In 2003, he lit up the Turbine Hall with an artificial sun that “warmed” 2 million visitors. Now he changes element: he will set up four mammoth, free-standing waterfalls around New York harbour, including one under Brooklyn Bridge. The project, sponsored by the U.S. non-profit organisation Public Art Found, will give an illusion of coolness to the hot Big Apple from mid-July to mid- October. But this is not the first time the artist has probed the power of water. In 2005 he installed a waterfall at the Dundee University. Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates in Central Park drew more than 4 million visitors in 2005, Eliasson’s waterfalls are the artistic dare of 2008.
Seeds of Hope
Imagine the world is hit by a natural disaster or a nuclear war. Now imagine the earth after one of these events. It’s a sad sight, isn’t it? But now, there is a modern Noah’s ark of every existing seed buried in a mountain, in the Norwegian islands of Svalbard. It’s the “Svalbard Global Seed Vault”, a bunker financed by the Norwegian government, that will contain 4.5 million of seeds. The vault is on the bowels of the Plaataberget mountain, where is preserved from any type of disaster. The temperature of the vault will guarantee the perfect conservation of the seeds. According to the experts, these can remain for 1000 years as well. I hope nothing happens to this amazing world, but if there should be a catastrophe, at least the survivors will have the chance of setting up a new Eden. But I fear they would destroy that too.
Photo by Marco Magrini
