He is known for large-scale sound installations in public spaces, creating unique instruments that reveal music inherent in natural and urban environments, and for his pioneering work in theater, film and interactive multi-media.
[3] Odland has collaborated with many well-known theater directors, musicians and artists including Peter Sellars, Tina Packer, Robert Woodruff, JoAnne Akalaitis, Tony Oursler, Dan Graham, Laurie Anderson, André Gregory, Jennifer Tipton, George Tsypin, Wallace Shawn and the Wooster Group.
[9][10] In "Sonic Excavation", a performance at the Denver Art Museum (1979), Odland played pre-Columbian flutes, ocarinas, drums, interwoven with location recordings.
After leaving the DCTC, he continued working on theater pieces with the director Peter Sellars (1985–1987) at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and with Tina Packer's "Shakespeare & Company" in Lenox, Massachusetts (1980–1988).
[15] Odland moved to New York City in 1990 to be closer to Europe, where he had begun working extensively with sound artist Sam Auinger on O+A installations (see below).
In the U.S., he continued to work in the theater, primarily in NYC with Joanne Akailitis, Andre Gregory, Wallace Shawn and Liz LaCompte's Wooster Group.
The exhibition was an interactive "Stonehenge-cosmological clock" with giant glass monoliths, sculptures, audio, video, solar refraction art installed in a cavernous gallery.
[18] During the 1990s, Odland began designing sonic installations for architectural spaces to acoustically define them as distinctive geographic places with their own history and to focus people on locating themselves and 'way finding' through their ears.
High Performance magazine described it: “A site-specific symphony of light and sound that explored the nature of presence, resonance and history as consciousness, CityDream succeeded in linking the past with the future in a holistic rather than linear form.
The result was a visionary work that invoked and reasserted the spiritual power of art through sensual experience without compromising its political essence or meaning.”[19] In Quiet is the New Loud (O+A, 2015), a piece for the Brugges Trienalle in Belgium, Odland and Auinger built balloon loudspeakers to accompany festival walkers through a map of "songlines", producing an echolocation readout that highlighted the Medieval architectural spaces.
When they placed microphones inside large amphora jars onsite, the discordant city noises were converted into their resonant harmonies and when played back into the site had a noticeable calming effect on bickering workers.
[33] It "combines a traditional memorial mass sung by a world class vocal quartet with the noises of fossil-fuel powered cars, helicopters, airplanes, horns and alarms".
[34][35] In 2013, Odland and a handful of musician friends embarked on a project to save an old steel water tank with cathedral-like acoustics and a 40-second reverb in Rangely, Colorado.
"[36] Ever since locals abducted him to it on the 1976 Chatauqua tour, Odland and friends had made pilgrimages to visit the tank, crawling through a portal to play and record music.
With two successful Kickstarter campaigns and the help of Town officials and hundreds of supporters, the empty vessel was rescued and converted into an up-to-code performance space/assembly hall with a recording studio.
Now officially the TANK Center for Sonic Arts, the venue attracts a wide range of musicians and choral groups and has garnered national attention.