‘There isn’t really an English word for what we have created. It's kind of an experience; a performance; a living artwork.’ So says Random International’s dramaturg Heloise Reynolds, of the practice’s latest installation, unveiled in London last week.
Staged in the echoing Roundhouse theatre, the art-meets-technology studio has designed seven helium-filled white globes that hover and swarm around the space on tiny propellers. In one moment, they’re pack-like, curious. In others, they’re inanimate, programmed, droning. ‘We’re trying to create a sense of otherness,’ says Random International co-founder Hannes Koch. ‘We want people to feel like aliens. We want to say, “This is how it feels to be intimately exposed to a very advanced organism.”’
Dreamt up in an unlikely industrial estate in Balham, where Random International’s engineers have spent the last five months buried under complex behavioural data maps, the spheres’ flocking behaviour is determined by generative algorithms built to resemble human characteristics. Able to react to their environment, the computer-controlled orbs select individuals from the audience to hone in on – swooping inquisitively towards them, or sinisterly mirroring their movements. In a landscape of driverless cars, digital butlers and ‘the robots are coming!’, these oddly familiar spheres pull at the tangled thread of what it means to be human in the age of AI.
Frequent Random International collaborator, choreographer Wayne McGregor, has long been fascinated by this ever-slimming intersection between man and machine. Through his futuristic staging and his boundary-defying collaborations, McGregor does more than walk the ‘uncanny valley’, he dances there.
As he has done here, engaging a troop of his dynamic studio dancers to perform underneath the hovering, human-like globes to an electronic score especially composed by Warp Records’ Mark Pritchard. The formidable likes of Edward Watson and Fukiko Takase look anonymous, painted with either a ‘+’ or ‘–’ symbol. They are human magnets, pulling together and pushing apart. The elemental dancers enter into a loose dialogue with the globes, staying low, as the orbs twist into lofty formations overhead.
The human and technological aspects of the exhibition interact seamlessly, a testament to the well-matched collaborators – despite the fact McGregor didn't know exactly how the installation would look and act until it was installed. ‘I got it conceptually, and that was enough,’ he explains.
It helps that the collaborators are ‘on the same page aesthetically’. Instead of shunning technology as a clinical device, both McGregor and Random International use it as a theatrical tool to evoke emotion. ‘I think technology can make you feel something,’ McGregor continues. ‘It’s visceral. It can help the audience to embody a performance.’
That’s exactly what the spheres do here. As the dancers file out, the stage is left empty for audience members to enter into their own duet with the white globes, in what Koch describes as an ‘emotive experiment’. Forgetting our inhibitions, we enter into a game of computerised cloud-gazing, in a display of how the human imagination, and the artificial one, can partner to create something out of this world.
The spheres are programmed using complex algorithms and motion sensors to react intelligently to their surroundings and to bodies in their environment.
Visitors will be surrounded by a mysterious flock of flying spheres in a hypnotic experience created in response to the Roundhouse’s unique architecture.
On Friday and Saturday evenings, the installation will host an immersive new dance work created by Wayne McGregor and featuring Company Wayne McGregor performing with dancers from The Royal Ballet.
INFORMATION
Wayne McGregor’s ‘+/– Human’ performances run until 28 August, and ‘Zoological’ is on view until 31 August. For more information, visit the Roundhouse website, the Random International website and Wayne McGregor’s website
ADDRESS
Roundhouse
Chalk Farm Road
London NW1 8EH
-
‘Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style’ at Design Museum interrogates the loaded history of swimwearCurator Amber Butchart speaks to Wallpaper* about the Design Museum’s latest exhibition, which explores the cultural impact of swimwear – from Pamela Anderson’s bombshell ‘Baywatch’ one-piece to those made for sports, leisure or fashion statement
-
The Frick Collection's expansion by Selldorf Architects is both surgical and delicateThe New York cultural institution gets a $220 million glow-up
-
Come as you are to see Kurt Cobain’s acoustic guitar on show in the UK for the first timeKurt Cobain’s acoustic guitar goes on display at the Royal College of Music Museum in London as part of an exhibition exploring Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance
-
A major Frida Kahlo exhibition is coming to the Tate Modern next yearTate’s 2026 programme includes 'Frida: The Making of an Icon', which will trace the professional and personal life of countercultural figurehead Frida Kahlo
-
A portrait of the artist: Sotheby’s puts Grayson Perry in the spotlightFor more than a decade, photographer Richard Ansett has made Grayson Perry his muse. Now Sotheby’s is staging a selling exhibition of their work
-
From counter-culture to Northern Soul, these photos chart an intimate history of working-class Britain‘After the End of History: British Working Class Photography 1989 – 2024’ is at Edinburgh gallery Stills
-
Celia Paul's colony of ghostly apparitions haunts Victoria MiroEerie and elegiac new London exhibition ‘Celia Paul: Colony of Ghosts’ is on show at Victoria Miro until 17 April
-
Teresa Pągowska's dreamy interpretations of the female form are in London for the first time‘Shadow Self’ in Thaddaeus Ropac’s 18th-century townhouse gallery in London, presents the first UK solo exhibition of Pągowska’s work
-
Sylvie Fleury's work in dialogue with Matisse makes for a provocative exploration of the female form'Drawing on Matisse, An Exhibition by Sylvie Fleury’ is on show until 2 May at Luxembourg + Co
-
What to see at BFI Flare film festival, 'a rich tapestry of queer experience'As one of the only film festivals to explicitly profile LGBTQI+ cinema, BFI Flare Film Festival remains a unique and beloved event. Here's what to see as it makes its return to London from 19 - 30 March
-
The enduring appeal of Transport for London’s seat designsFrom artist Rita Keegan’s new collage to fashion designer Adam Jones’ Overground suit, TfL moquettes continue to enjoy a cult status
