A new artistic project has been launched, which uses animation and augmented reality to give children a creative and fun way to talk to adults about environmental issues. In the first of two articles, Times of Malta meets the man behind Earth Speakr, UN Goodwill Ambassador and superstar of the art world Olafur Eliasson, to talk about using art to address important issues andto ask... if children have something to say, are we going to listen?

For many years, artist Olafur Eliasson has used his work to ask important questions about  our relationship with the natural world.

As public awareness of environmental issues became more acute, he decided that the younger generation needed to have their voices heard on the subject. He came up with Earth Speakr, a novel way to capture and amplify children’s views on the planet and its future.

Artist Olafur Eliasson, creator of Earth Speakr. PHOTO: Lars Borges

The Earth Speakr app is a blank canvas for children to express themselves in their own way. They can use it to record themselves speaking, and their recordings are used to bring inanimate objects to life as cartoon characters, to deliver their messages in an engaging way. Adults, world-leaders and decision-makers are then invited to watch the video animations to hear what the talking clouds, trees and plastic bottles are saying.

‘Loud Speakrs’ allow messages to be positioned on a virtual map at locations where children feel their messages most need to be heard. According to Heiko Maas, Germany’s Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs, Earth Speakr messages are already being transmitted in Brussels, Strasbourg and Berlin “in the heart of European policymaking”.

Earth Speakr is part of the cultural programme of the German presidency of the Council of the EU, which launched on July 1. Eliasson describes it as “a collective artwork that invites kids to be artists. What Earth Speakr will become depends on the Earth Speakrs – their creativity and imagination. The artwork is made up of their thoughts and visions, concerns and hopes. What they create can be playful and whimsical, serious or poetic. There is no right or wrong  and it is easy for everyone to take part. Earth Speakr invites kids to speak their hearts and minds and participate in shaping our world and the planet, today and in the future.”

When it comes to art, Danish-Icelandic Eliasson is a pioneer, redefining the role of ‘artist’ and resetting the bar. The multi-award-winning architect and designer has created work for some of the world’s most famous spaces, among them the Museum of Modern Art in New York, London’s Serpentine Gallery, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Palace of Versailles. He is also a lecturer, activist and philanthropist ‒ a force of nature and an advocate for its protection.

The Olafur Eliasson Studio in Berlin houses a 90-strong team of “craftsmen, architects, archivists, researchers, administrators, cooks, art historians and specialised technicians”.  Together they produce the exciting and thought-provoking artworks Eliasson has become known for and which have attracted millions.

These artworks combine natural elements such as water, mist and ice with reflective and transparent materials like mirror and glass in man-made ‘natural’ creations, which are installed in  urban spaces. Perhaps the most famous of these are the artificial waterfalls he constructed in New York and his giant indoor sun for the Weather Project at London’s Tate Modern.

A keen observer of the human condition, Eliasson explores the emotional and psychological responses art can produce. He is known for inviting visitors to co-create his projects, the actual ‘art’ being created through the participation and experiences of others. He allows the audience to find their place within it, to play their own part and to decide for themselves what it all means.

“Reality is relative, we can change things” is the underlying message and his latest project is no exception. Eliasson describes Earth Speakr as a collaboration between himself and Europe’s youngest citizens. As the project goes live across the continent, I am invited to meet the man himself, who talks to me from his Berlin studio. 

It’s funny, it’s going to be hard to get them [kids] on the board of anything because it sounds like ‘bored’; we might have to adjust our boards to be not so boring

Earth Speakr is about the environment, a recurrent theme in your work. Perhaps you can tell us about what originally sparked your interest in the subject and how the theme has developed in your work since then.

Well, I grew up in Denmark and Iceland, and in Iceland I was fortunate to spend a lot of time out in nature. My father was an artist, painting often. As banal as it sounds, I was just sort of tagging along as a child. I then eventually was very involved with hiking and that’s to some extent how I also got inspired with my work on one side, and on the other side, I was very interested in... what is our experience? How do we know what atmosphere does? What’s the ephemeral? What’s the thing you can’t really measure? When do we feel good or when do we feel stressed? Do we even know what stresses us or makes us feel good?

So, that was my interest in what we call nature, or whatever we call it nowadays, the anthropocene, and I was also interested in this sort of psychology of... when are we really happy?

It seems like when we made the human rights at the UN some 75 years ago, we actually might have forgotten that making rights for plants, species, the ocean, you know, the commons as we call them… we sort of forgot that it’s not really going to work if we only give the rights to one part of the inhabitants of this big spaceship we’re living on.

Malta’s first Earth Speakr messages were created on July 3 by Andre Micallef, aged 12.

How do I know whether I am entitled to cut down the tree just because I want to be more efficient and I need wood? I don’t really say I have the answers but I got involved in asking the questions.

I’m not at all esoteric but the wisdom of indigenous people very often was defined on the ability to balance out things. They were very smart, they were like, well, we need to not ruin our own livelihood.

When the environmental discussion started, I wouldn’t say I was an environmentalist. I was just really interested in... how is nature treating us and how are we treating it back? And is the equation working? And that’s kind of how my work also evolved.

Let’s talk about Earth Speakr. So in a nutshell, you’ve created an app for kids, which gives them a fun way to talk to adults about environmental issues, which is obviously a response to the urgency and scale of the environmental crisis. Can you tell us more?

Well it is, as I said, for kids. It does still rely on the parents and the friends that are grown-ups of the kids to work as the assistants. It’s kind of upside down, right? The kids are the experts and us, the grown-ups, have to help them. That is the key message, and I rely on the media to help me to get it to the kids because it’s not easy to reach all the kids. And what is maybe most important, it’s made with the kids.

The Earth Speakr app transforms children’s voice recordings into messages delivered by animated characters.

Sometimes people mistakenly say, “Oh, that is very good, to give the kids a voice is great.” But that’s wrong. The kids have a voice. They’re really smart. They have a voice. We just need to acknowledge and listen to them. And there’s something there. Suddenly also the voice has more impact, currency, leverage. The voice matters and so the way we listen is also what gives the kids agency.

The children, the kids, they’re not stupid. They are not going to be elected again in six months. They’re not trying to make more money and sell you something. They don’t have any biases. And if they have biases, it’s probably from the parents. Or they are too much on Facebook, right? They are being manipulated. They’re smart until we take their opportunities, their resources, their economic rights, their social rights, take that away from them and they will radicalise, right?

So the idea of the future inhabitants of this spaceship here, the planet, to give them the agency to co-produce the future with us and to actually listen to them so they know ‘woah! somebody is listening to me! I must be okay and maybe I’m not so stupid after all. Maybe I’m not as stupid as my parents and my school and my football team says, maybe I’m good enough’.

So, in that way, I think it’s almost like art has a space, culture has a space, which is a safe space where people are welcome to have difficult conversations. And kids, the young people, they should be invited too.

I’m humble to be passing on the paintbrush, so to speak, to the future. And it is ours together, but I’m just not here for very long. So to have them on the board, it’s funny, it’s going to be hard to get them on the board of anything because it sounds like ‘bored’, like being bored… “I’m bored on the board,” which is funny.

But we might have to adjust our boards to be not so boring, because otherwise the kids don’t want to go there and then we’re going to have troubles. So I’m trying to somehow reverse things. And you know, in a meeting when a kid says something it’s important to say, not “what did you say” but you should say “why did you say that? And then you get something completely interesting, right?

Then you say, “Maybe you have the answer.”

The full video of the conversation between Olafur Eliasson and Laura Swale is available to watch in the online version of this article on the Times of Malta website.

In this extended interview, the artist talks about values, governance and the UN. We ask for his thoughts on how the Maltese government might balance the economic value of construction with the impact on the environment and the well-being of people.

We also surprise him with Malta’s first Earth Speakr message from 12-year-old Andre Micallef from Rabat. In a second article to appear on Sunday, July 19, Eliasson talks in greater depth about action for the environment, working with kids and his hopes for Earth Speakr.

The Earth Speakr app can be downloaded from Google Play or the App Store, visit the website at www.earthspeakr.art or join the discussion @earthspeakr on social media. Find out more about Olafur Eliasson at www.olafureliasson.net