London-based artist collective Random International made a name for themselves over the last few years for their immersive works of art. But of all their installations, Rain Room is easily the piece they’re most renowned for—with people having lined up for hours on end to experience the impressive installation.
The piece has been exhibited all over, from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) to the YUZ Museum in Shanghai, but has now found itself a new permanent home thanks to The Sharjah Art Foundation.
The installation—which was first unveiled in 2012 at the Barbican in London—is essentially a perpetual downpour of water. A total of 1,200 litres of recycled water drops through the floor, where its then treated and redirected to be dropped again.
Cameras capture visitors movements, and then super-reactive sensors are triggered, making the water drops move away as people travel across the room.
Random International’s founders Hanne Koche and Florian Ortkrass hope UAE visitors leave with more than just the novelty of being stood under heavy rainfall without actually getting wet—telling The Art Newspaper, “From our perspective, what is more compelling than the rain as a context is having the artwork in a region where one’s life experience as a human being is more and more regulated. Experiencing that in an art installation is interesting because you really encounter the presence of the algorithm first hand and we hope that will change perspective on the mechanised and automated machine world that surrounds us”.
