A Symphony of Disappearing Sounds for the Great Salt Lake

 A Symphony of Disappearing Sounds for the Great Salt Lake is a great temporary art exhibit by artist Olafur Eliasson. It was being showcased nightly 9-9:30 between March 26th and April 4th 2026 in Memory Grove Park. It is a large sphere that is displaying a really fun light show set to music and sounds of the Great Salt Lake. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit, other than dealing with the traffic and crowds for it haha. You would have thought it was a rock concert for how busy it was.

Quick Details:

Length: We had to park up at The Capitol so we did about 3/4 of a mile out and back.
Trail Type: DR3.
Difficulty: Little bit of a climb, DR3
Elevation Gain: About 80 feet.
Restroom: Yes, but I am not sure if it is open in winter.
Dogs? Yes, leashed.
Other Info: As mentioned, this is a temporary exhibit between 3/26/26 and 4/4/26

To Get Here:

Take i15 to 600 South heading east. Turn left on State Street. Follow that all the way up to the State Capitol. Find parking closer to the southeast side if possible. The trail down into Memory Grove is near the southeast part.

State Capitol east entrance, Salt Lake City, UT 84103. 40.77697935338402, -111.88610111232636

Downtown Salt Lake City (Passenger Seat Photography (PSP)).

The Astra Tower (PSP) Salt Lakes new tallest building. Oh, and yes. That is rain. Tonight was supposed to be the last rain free night of the week, which was why we decided to come. But uh, yea we got rained on a little bit.

The Utah State Capitol (PSP). It is quite pretty at night.

The Trail/show:

The East Senate Building and the Capitol Dome behind it. That light on the top is a 1990’s replacement. The original 1916 Capitol Dome Light is down in the basement.

The sphere below glowing orange before the show started.

I didn’t take any pictures of the switchbacks as we were in a steady stream of people heading in. You can see what they look like from our last time here. They have regularly spaced lights so it wasn’t too bad.

It took us a little longer than expected to get here so the show started while we were about 3/4 of the way down.

It was really neat the way the light patterns moved around the sphere creating 3D layers.

Quick video to get a sense of what’s happening.

Super pretty.

Oblivious assholes that decided to just stand right in front of it despite tons of people sitting behind them.

I really enjoyed all the fun colorful patterns.

Eventually I decided to move out into the road. I wish I had done it a little sooner.

It is similar to the neat spheres we have seen in some museums like Clark Planetarium.

More fun images.

Another quick video.

More color.

Wow! That was fun!

Just a plain white sphere when nothing is playing.

Some acknowledgements.

The sphere again, and just a small portion of the crowd. There were a lot more people than I thought there would be. But again, according to the weather this was supposed to be the last non rainy night for the week.

We debated about just leaving, or maybe waiting for most of the crowd to leave… but uh… most people were still just hanging out so we decided we may as well leave.

Again, no pictures of the switchbacks due to being funneled up them with a lot of other people like sheep. Bahhhh.

The Capitol again.

The dome above the East Senate building.

The new Museum of Utah is coming along. It looks like it is set to open in late June.

The capitol though a rain soaked window (PSP).

Then I rolled the window down haha (PSP).

The front (PSP).

Downtown (PSP).

The new Mammoth puck in front of the Delta Center (PSP).

Well that was fun! I wish we had managed to make it work when we were down here just a few days ago rather than making a special trip, but whatever. It was neat, and worth the special trip. The music was a little noise heavy at times (like not natural noise), but I liked the beat of it, with some of the natural noises of the Great Salt Lake. I particularly liked the frogs (wish I had recorded that part). I am not sure if this was the best park for this kind of exhibit, but I can’t think of any other one that would have been better so yeah. But hey, it was free! 9 out of 10 squirrels.

As for difficulty, parking up at the Capitol required going down the switchbacks, DR3.

As for dogs, I mean, they are allowed in the park, but I don’t know how fun it would be for them with how loud it is, and with the large crowd of people.