NEWS
EVENTS
Walk Through Rain Without Getting Wet at Barbican's Rain Room this Winter
Monday 8th October 2012 | Osh
It Never Rains but it Pours is a phrase that could definitely be used to describe the weather this summer, but this winter at Barbican Curve gallery you can dance in the rain without getting soaked. In Fact you won't get remotely wet.
The young and innovative creative studio rAndom International bring us Rain Room this winter, an interactive installation featuring one hundred square metres of torrential rain inside the depths of the Barbican Curve Gallery. Rain: you’d think the mere mention of the word alone would prompt the British Public to run a mile, but the sorcery of the piece is that you can take a stroll through this downpour, and emerge completely dry.
The technology behind this concept is based on 3D tracking cameras that respond to your movements and open the water up around you. No stranger to the perplexing power of technology, rAndom International’s first installation Audience in 2009 consisted of a congregation of ever-watching mirrors. The android-like mirrors reacted to audience members as if possessing an intelligence of their own, picking their prey and collectively pursuing them with their own reflection.
As with their previous work, it is human behavior that really concerns the artists behind this extremely advanced mechanic installation come science experiment . How will you react to Rain Room? Perhaps you will approach the torrent of water tentatively at first but as your confidence grows playing Zeus, I challenge you not to try and catch this omniscient organism out and get yourself wet!
Rain Room is open to the public at The Curve, Barbican Centre until 3 March 2013. Admission is free. On selected Sundays throughout the duration of the installation, visitors are also invited to experience movement pieces performed by Random Dance, choreographed by Wayne Gregor, and set to a score by Max Richter. These performances are certain to be the highlight of the whole project.
Knowing the British weather, Rain Room certainly won’t be the only place its pouring it down this winter, but it will surely be the best place to get caught in a shower!
Watch the Guardian’s video of Rain Room below:
By Sophie Douglas
