Random International

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About Artist

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Florian Ortkrass and Hannes Koch were both born in 1975 in Germany. The two met at Brunel University, graduating in 2002, before going on to study at the Royal College of Art. They founded Random International in 2005. Based in London with an outpost in Berlin, the studio today employs a large and diverse team of creatives.

Random International is a collaborative studio for experimental practice within contemporary art. Using science to develop a new material vocabulary, its work invites viewers to consider the man/machine relationship through explorations of behaviour and natural phenomena. In more than a decade since the studio’s inception, the focus of Random International’s artistic practice has continuously evolved, and today it embraces sculpture, performance, and installation, often on an architectural scale. Their highly collectable work creates a bridge between objects and products by merging monumental design, graphic artwork and technology.

Their Swarm Study series recreates the migratory patterns of birds using light. Using a digital algorithm that simulates the way insects swarm, the light installations chart birds’ flight trajectories through flashes of light. The viewer is invited into a responsive relationship with the work as the movement of the swarm illuminates the exhibition space.

Their critically acclaimed installation Rain Room is in the collection of Los Angeles County Museum of Art and has also been shown at London’s Barbican (2012); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013); and Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2015/2018). An edition of Rain Room has become the first permanently installed artwork at the Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE (2018).

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