Olafur Eliasson has created an interactive installation in which members of the public play a big part.
Channeling an individuals creativity and playfulness isn’t an easy thing to do within an art practice and especially harder when working with the general public, but Olafur Eliasson has managed to do both with his installation in New York known as ‘The Collectivity Project’. The piece contains an all white Lego brick city scape, originally created by ten architecture practices (including OMA New York) who were asked by Eliasson to produce a structure each, which would be added together to create the overall piece. It was then put on display and the public were allowed to warp, dismantle, add, destroy, build, create and connect in any way they wanted to. This unique way of working allows the audience to fully interact with the installation and takes the encountering individual back to an almost child-like way of being creative.
As the original structures begins to loose shape and the publics own creation starts to take over, there is a beautiful combination of imagination and juxtaposition to the New York skyline. The interactive public are not bound by health and safety, logic or engineering and simply create freely.
