Random International is a postdigital art group exploring the impact of technological development on the human condition. Experimental by nature, Random International’s practice is fuelled by research and scientific discovery. The group aims to broaden the question of what it is to be alive today by experimenting with how we connect — to different kinds of life, to different views of the world, and to one another.

Artists Florian Ortkrass and Hannes Koch were both born in 1975 in Germany and met at Brunel University before going on to complete their Masters at the Royal College of Art. They founded Random International following their graduation from the RCA in 2005.

Nearing almost two decades since the studio’s inception, the focus of Random International’s artistic practice has continuously evolved, and today embraces sculpture, performance, and installation, often on an architectural scale. Their highly collectable work creates a bridge between the human, the digital and the architectural scales by creating monumental works that offer their audiences personal and instinctive experiences.

Their Swarm Study series explores the perceived embodiment of collective intelligence as expressed solely through movement, and the instinctual connections this can provoke in the human visual system. Inspired by the enigmatic and acrobatic efficiency of starlings’ murmurations in flight, the work simulates and disseminates natural flocking behaviour at its most basic algorithmic form, embodying it in light.

Their critically acclaimed installation Rain Room is in the collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art as well as the Sharjah Art Foundation and has also been exhibited at London’s Barbican (2012); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013); Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2015/2018); and MoCA Busan (2019). Editions of Rain Room have been permanently installed at the Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE in 2018 and the Jackalope Collection in Melbourne, respectively (2019).

Their work is also found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum London, the Maxine & Stuart Frankel Foundation for Art Detroit, the YUZ Foundation Shanghai, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art LA.

Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York

Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

Tate Modern, London. Museo di Arte Contemporaneo Luigi Pecci, Prato

Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

The Barbican Centre, London

The International Design Museum, Jerusalem

The International Design Museum, Munich

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

The Seoul Design Museum, Seoul

New Media Gallery, New Westminster

ZKM, Karlsruhe. Kunsthalle Praha, Prague

YUZ Museum, Shanghai