Random International: Rain Room

Random International uses science and technology to create artworks that aim to question and challenge human experience within a machine-led world, engaging viewers through explorations of behavior and natural phenomena. Random International’s Rain Room (2012) is an immersive environment of perpetually falling water that pauses wherever a human body is detected. Presented as the first exhibition part of The Hyundai Project: Art + Technology initiative, Rain Room offered an experience of what is seemingly impossible: the ability to control rain. Within this large-scale indoor installation, a continuous downpour created a cacophonous shower that allowed visitors to move about freely, protected from the water falling all around them.

Founded in 2005, Random International is a collaborative studio for experimental practice within contemporary art. Taking science as a means to develop a new material vocabulary, their work invites consideration of the man/machine relationship with the viewer as an active participant. In the decade following the studio's inception, the focus of Random International’s artistic practice has continuously evolved and today encompasses sculpture, performance, and installation on an architectural scale. The studio’s recent exhibitions include Kinds of Life, commissioned for the Zayed Centre for Research into Rare Disease in Children, Great Ormond Street Hospital, London (2019), Physical Algorithm, Paradise City Art Space (2019), Out of Control, MoCA Busan (2019), Rain Room, Jackalope Art Pavilion, Melbourne (2019), and Self and Other, Albert Embankment, London (2018). In 2013, Random International’s Tower: Instant Structure for Schacht XII was shown at World Heritage Zollverein as part of the Ruhrtriennale festival. The studio’s sculpture Fly was premiered at the fourth Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2011, and their work Swarm Study / III is on permanent display at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.