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Olafur Eliasson, The weather project, 2003
Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London (The Unilever Series)
Monofrequency lights, projection foil, haze machines, mirror foil, aluminium and scaffolding 26.7 x 22.3 x 155.4m.
Photo: Jens Ziehe © Olafur Eliasson 2003.
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You can’t experience Olafur Eliasson's 'The weather project' at the Tate Modern any longer; it doesn't exist – except in documentary photos and videos that show only what it looked like, not what it felt like to be there. It was visited by over two million people and, for many of them, was a highly charged experience that now remains as a vivid memory.
An enormous disc, glowing sodium yellow and suspended at the end of the Turbine Hall, was the first thing that most visitors would have seen on arrival in Tate Modern. This was an illusion; what they actually saw was semi-circular, appearing to be completely round because a vast mirrored ceiling had been
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installed that reflected everything below. The atmosphere in the Hall, filled with a fine mist created by a mixture of water and glycol-based fluid, and with this strange light, seemed set for an endlessly awaited narrative or drama. The audience obliged. They stood, staring about in the apocalyptic glow or, in their hundreds, they lay on the floor looking up at their tiny distant reflections. Spontaneously they joined forces, morphing constantly through seemingly pre-arranged shapes and patterns.
Tamsin Dillon is Head of Art on the Underground, Transport for London. Visit www.tfl.gov.uk/art.
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