Random International

The Museum of Contemporary Art Busan is delighted to present an exhibition by London and Berlin-based art group, Random International. Exploring the human condition in an increasingly mechanized world, Random International experiment with different notions of consciousness, perception, and instinct. Shown for the first time in South Korea, the museum presents the internationally renowned Rain Room installation, shown alongside an exhibition of video artwork, Algorithmic Swarm Study / I.

Rain Room is a one hundred square meter environment of continual rainfall, which responds to the presence of those within it. Upon entering, visitors are simultaneously exposed to and protected from the water falling all around. Although the sound and smell of the rain are intense, its touch remains absent leaving visitors dry within a perpetual downpour as they navigate their way through the work. First exhibited at The Barbican, London in 2012, Rain Room has subsequently been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013), YUZ Museum, Shanghai (2015 and 2018-19), LACMA, Los Angeles (2015-17), the Sharjah Art Foundation (2018), and The Jackalope Art Collection, in association with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (2019). Rain Room seeks to explore how human relationships, to each other and to nature, are increasingly mediated through technology that is largely intangible. A physical experience that both deprives and intensifies the senses, Rain Room invites an exploration of the individual actions and emotions that can be generated by this unique, counter-intuitive environment.

Shown as a video installation, Algorithmic Swarm Study / I features over half a million objects moving together in perfect harmony to simulate distributed, embodied intelligence. On a frame-by-frame basis, these digital Algorithmic Swarm Study / I iterations examine the complex patterns of movement inherent to the swarming organism. Each ‘flock’ is a unique, generative visualization that has been individually bred at Random International’s studio. Once the flocking algorithm begins to run, it will do so indefinitely. These works investigate the expressive power of collective movement, and the instinctual reactions it can provoke in the human visual system. Through the complex behavior of simple forms, Algorithmic Swarm Study / I simulate a sense of agency and life.

Throughout these works, Random International considers how the physical and material realities of technological progress might come to be understood. Rain Room and the Algorithmic Swarm Study / I seek to question the role of the human being within their wider context, asking how much we are in control of our environment, and how much are we controlled by it.

For more information, visit MoCA Busan's (opens in a new window) website.