Installation art interacts with the visitor – like a brief encounter, a dance with the unknown. Sight, sound and touch are at a paramount of need as we enter, a society riddled with individuals choosing technological solitude over socially stimulating situations. With Random International’s Rain Room at LACMA in Los Angeles, one gravitates toward our long lost humanity and soul search within these primal art moments.  Even if the escape is simply fifteen minutes in a black painted room. Filled with rain.

Standing back against the black wall facing the rain you have a different experience that of onlooker. There is a grid of droplet forming sensors hanging above whose rain is caught by a mirrored grid of grates on the floor. A spotlight situated in the corner highlights the droplets as they fall around you and other outlined figures.

As witness you experience the magic of diving thru the rain. You tend to reminisce of sitting cozy, indoors watching the window hit vigorously with rain yet you yourself are not affected. The mechanism senses you and the droplets cease from falling as you meander through the exhibit.

It is both playful and powerful. Playful in the sheer joy and child-like wonder anticipating the rain to fall upon your face. Powerful as you prowl thru the storm as the droplets cease from falling around you in a protective orb.

I was donned in all black, I have brown hair and as I knelt down to take my friends picture the rain machine must have forgotten I existed. I felt the rain fall first on my head, down my back, and finally one very large cloud of rain all on my hands holding her iPhone. [No iPhone’s were harmed in this exhibit] We laughed and quickly relocated, a small scream could be heard thru the thunder. Before you know it the next group is standing by the entrance and you realize your time is over, punctuated with a booming voice, “times up!” We stood back for a few moments after leaving the room, standing by the doorway, in awe. We contemplated running in just one more time. We looked and smiled at the young security guard standing next to us by the exit, she smiled back.