Torrential Experience

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/oct/03/random-international-rain-barbican

There’s a new installation at the Barbican gallery.

…you too can now control the elements and part a deluge of torrential rain in the Barbican‘s Curve gallery. The latest work by a young experimental practice, Random International, Rain Room invites brave visitors to enter a hundred-square-metre downpour, without getting in the slightest bit wet… As visitors step up on to the stage, these identical vertical lines of driving rain begin to be repelled, as if each body is giving off a kind of invisible magnetic field. As you step further in, the rain closes around you, enveloping each silhouetted figure in a perfect cylindrical void. It is a startlingly surreal experience.” Source Oliver Wainwright, writer for guardian.co.uk

I find the experience fascinating.  My favorite aspect of the installation by Random International is the viewer’s reaction.  Though I wonder if instead of using the traditional term, viewer, if I should instead describe them as interactors.  The sense of awe, astonishment, curiosity, and challenge apparently displayed by the interactors is intriguing.  Each reaction is different.