By Sara Gates, Source: Huffington Post

What would it be like to make tea or read a newspaper underwater?

That’s the question artist Lars Jan is asking with his multi-platform activism project, “Holoscenes.” Using specially built aquariums, Jan wants to create a visceral representation of climate change by placing people doing mundane tasks in water-filled tanks and allowing the water to rise.

“Climate change is a mirror. It’s more about us — the behavioral and cognitive science behind how we make decisions, think in the long-term, and feel empathy — than it is about CO2 or melting glaciers,” Jan wrote in an email to The Huffington Post. “We need to broaden our perspective, not only on this issue, but in how we think about our planet and all of our communities as a single, related system.”

The miniature aquariums, which fill with water at a rate of 12 tons per minute, are meant to show what our daily lives would look like amid accelerating sea level rise. (With the unstoppable decay of the West Antarctic ice sheet, the global sea level is expected to rise by at least 10 feet by the end of the next two centuries.)

But, when it comes to what everyone takes away from the project, Jan says it’s up to each viewer.

See more at: Huffington Post