Rain falling inside a building is a great Dadaist image—incongruous, surreal, absurd, not the sort of thing you’d want to happen in your own living room of course, but fine in someone else’s. Or in an art gallery. Random International‘s latest installation at the Barbican’s Curve gallery in London is called Rain Room and it’s a room, a hundred square meters, full of rain.
But the great thing is, while it’s raining all around you, you don’t actually get wet, because as you step up onto the stage where the downpour’s happening, it stops, repelling away from your body as if you’re some kind of rain god. Then as you navigate the stage, the rain surrounds you without actually falling on you as you become enveloped in a protective cocoon, allowing you to wander around this bizarre stage without getting drenched.
This crazy trickery is brought about by 3D tracking cameras which track people walking about the stage, mapping their movements as they stroll about and responding to them appropriately.
