When we were asked by Hyatt to curate and commission the final, key artwork in the art collection at Park Hyatt New York, the brand’s flagship property, we knew that the piece had to be extraordinary in order to fulfill Park Hyatt’s dedication to outstanding art in its hotels.
VISTO selected Random International to create a new piece as part of their acclaimed Swarm Study series of sculptures. Random’s powerful work has been praised worldwide, with successful installations of Rain Room and Swarm Study in museums including MoMA, LACMA, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Barbican, and Yuz Museum, Shanghai.
Placed at the center of the hotel’s restaurant, Swarm Study / XI mesmerizes diners as its 18,144 lights turn on and off in rapid succession to represent the movement of a swarm of animals.
Each light is like a neuron, making an independent decision to turn on or off depending on the activity of its neighbors. Like swarms of animals or the structure of our nervous system, these seemingly random, individual actions, when viewed as a whole, appear as an elegant, coordinated system. As Bevy, the restaurant, highlights the work of everyone involved in its beautifully-constructed dishes—from the farmer to the server—Swarm Study / XI is a representation of that complex, creative process in which many seemingly unrelated individuals work together.
The work is literally built out of thousands of individual, discrete parts—from the LEDs, to the sticks in which they are embedded, to the cables and circuit boards—that all come together to create Swarm’s symphonic movement.
Never repeating itself, Swarm explores how the mind can stitch disparate, abstract data together to perceive a static object as living and organic. It works thanks to the magic of the human brain.
The flow of movement encapsulated by the artwork conjures a vision of the millions of pedestrians weaving their way through a city in pursuit of business and pleasure. In that respect, Swarm Study / XI is a fitting tribute to the vitality of New York City.