Eliasson is also planning his first permanent outdoor sculptural installation in the United States on the Bard College campus, in a field close by their Frank Gehry-designed performance arts center. Entitled The Parliament of Reality, its opening is scheduled for July 2008, roughly the same time as the Waterfalls.

As described in a Bard press release, it seems like a meditative meeting place, druidical and ceremonial, something out of Norse mythology or akin to Stonehenge. The plan: a circular pond, 135 feet in diameter, surrounded by a ring of 24 trees. In the center of the pond, a circular island,

paved with individual stones that inscribe a twelve-point pattern derived from the meridian lines of nautical charts and the compass. The island is accessed via a stone bridge covered by a steel latticework tunnel. Based on the island’s floor, the tunnel’s design is composed of a series of ellipses ... Large, smooth boulders situated in two rows around the outer rim of the island provide seating.

And no groundhogs will be harmed in the excavation of the site.