制作寿司是一项结合技艺与美感的美食艺术，无论是在家尝试还是在寿司店观赏师傅操作，都令人着迷。首先，需要准备好新鲜的食材，包括寿司米、海苔、醋、糖、盐以及你喜欢的鱼类或蔬菜。第一步是煮米并调味：将米饭煮熟后拌入调好的寿司醋，让其冷却备用。接着铺设海苔，将拌好醋的米均匀铺在海苔上，再加入切好的生鱼片、黄瓜、牛油果等配料。然后，小心地将其卷起，用竹帘轻压成型。最后用湿刀将寿司卷切段，整齐摆盘，可搭配酱油、芥末与腌姜一同食用。每一道工序都需要细致与耐心，而这正是寿司的魅力所在——在极简的材料中，展现出料理人的用心与对食材的尊重。

Usually when a museum is flooded with water, something has gone seriously wrong. But at the Fondation Beyeler just outside the Swiss city of Basel, the flooding of the museum is all part of the show: a new site-specific installation called Life by the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson.

The artist has removed one side of the Renzo Piano-designed building (with the architect’s blessing) and let the feature pond—usually separated from the climate-controlled interior by a large glass wall—into the museum. Visitors can navigate the waters, which are up to 80cm deep, using a series of walkways that run in and out of the building. At night, the interior is lit up with blue light.

Eliasson has also dyed the water a fluorescent green and filled it with pond plants, including water lilies and shellflowers selected by the landscape architect Günther Vogt. The water has been coloured using uranine, an organic dye that is commonly used to observe water currents, and which Eliasson has used previously for his Green River (1998) work where he dyed rivers in cities such as Stockholm, Tokyo and Los Angeles.

In an accompanying artist statement, Eliasson writes: “Together with the museum, I am giving up control over the artwork, so to speak, handing it over to human and non-human visitors, to plants, microorganisms, the weather, the climate—many of these elements that museums usually work very hard to keep out.”

The southern side of the building will be open to the elements for the duration of the show, which ends in July. Eliasson writes that “even if no human visitors are in the space, other beings—insects, bats, or birds, for instance—can fly through or take up temporary abode within it.” This possibility is very much part of the work, with the artist adding that when he first spoke to the museum’s director Sam Keller about ideas for the show, he thought to himself: “Why don’t we invite everyone to the show? Let’s invite the planet—plants and various species”.

The show is open 24 hours a day. “Visitors can access the installation at any time. After 9.30pm they do not need a ticket,” says a spokeswoman. She adds that, in terms of non-human visitors, so far there have been “insects, spiders, ducks, a goose and cats.”