The public stood in line for hours to see the Rain Room in London and New York. Now a version of the immersive art experience, which allows you to walk into a downpour without getting wet thanks to motion sensors in the ceiling, is attracting capacity crowds at the Yuz Museum in Shanghai.
The installation, by the design collective Random International, is likely to resonate even more with visitors in California when it opens at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on 1 November (until 6 March 2016).
California is suffering a severe drought—a state of emergency was declared in January—and its inhabitants are obsessed with water. This may give the work a thematic depth and complexity that critics say it lacked in past incarnations.
In Los Angeles, where workshops are popping up to teach you how to install rain barrels in your backyard, the idea of experiencing a self-contained, self-sustaining water system, which recirculates 480 gallons throughout the show, may be read more as a meditation on human consumption and the environment than just a fantasy about weather that responds to our presence.
