Olafur Eliasson - House to be Lived In

This house is perched above the arroyo. The land it occupies is essentially vertical. It looks like a trailer on legs, stout legs. Every window has been blocked out, save one. Inside all the rooms are covered - floors, walls, and ceilings with black, interlocking foam floorcovering. New walls appear to have been built.

At first the location of the house seems arbitrary, unnecessary except for one piece in the show. This piece is a 1 foot square opening, at head height which looks through a mirrored tunnel some 4? feet long. At the end of the tunnel is a window onto the landscape - a golf course, the canyon, Pasadena. Hanging at the far end of the tunnel is a disc which appears to be clear at times and at others yellow or green. The disc, suspended by a wire througn the ceiling of the tunnel, slowly, slowly turns, and as it does, its repeating reflections turn and in each succeeding, receeding reflection the color of the disc is altered slightly. The mirrors also reflect the outside world - an upside down golf course, cars on the road heading in two directions at once. This mirrored tunnel is an enormous contrast to the other pieces in the show.

Although there are stationary pieces where you provide movement by walking toward them, most are created with the light of 575W spot lights playing on prisms of various sizes and shapes suspended, their movement directed by soundless motors in the ceiling. The projections are exquisitely beautiful, particularly one that plays on a piece of scrim (the best view of the effect being on the side without the gear). This unusual round prism, which resembles a frozen millisecond when a drop of water falls into a still pool, casts light arcs, ovals and circles which at one point coalesce into an image that looks like an eye.

The work has a very dreamy effect which, for me, was amplified as I reflected on it days later. It is a beautiful metaphor for the mind, in a sense. One's internal life represented by the house and the view outward being almost a complete illusion. There is something 'real' out there but are you sure what that is?

Like I said in the previous post, I wish I had seen The Weather Project.