Climate Change Art Installation Pops Up In Times Square

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — Visitors in Times Square were treated to a surprise new spectacle when an art installation about climate change and rising waters popped up in the busy tourist hub.

The installation — called Holoscenes — features an actor enclosed in a plastic tank slowly filling with water. As time passes, the actor interacts with the rising water levels, meant to represent how humanity will be forced to adapt to rising sea levels.

"It looks like a public spectacle, it looks like a David Blaine piece or something like that" director Lars Jan told the Associated Press. "It attracts people, it attracts young people, it attracts old people — and I want them to ask 'well why are people performing everyday behaviors?' 'and why is the water going up and down?'"

"What it really is, is a meditation on human's relationship to water. And I think that's going to be the biggest issue of the 21st century."

Check out Holoscenes at Times Square in the video below:

Screengrab courtesy Associated Press video