French artist and composer Céleste Boursier-Mougenot has expanded his monumental sound installation, Clinamen, to its largest iteration to date, now on view at the Park Avenue Armory. For those who track his work—perhaps remembering his smaller, bird-and-guitar installations or an earlier iteration of this piece at SFMOMA, in 2017—the sheer scale here is breathtaking. Spanning 55,000 square feet, the vast, shadowy drill hall has been punctuated by three massive, circular pools of a deep cerulean blue that together hold 30,000 gallons of water. Above: photo courtesy of the Park Avenue Armory

What happens inside these pools is pure alchemy. Nearly 800 white porcelain bowls float on gentle, motorized water currents. They drift, stall, and unpredictably collide. The title Clinamen comes from Lucretius’s ancient atomistic philosophy—the unpredictable "swerve" of atoms that allows matter to collide and create life. Here, that swerve creates music—a tinkle, a cling—and many other authorless sounds that have yet to be named.

I am always captivated by art that relinquishes rigid control to let the environment write itself—in fact, for me the most intriguing art never makes me think of any other art but what’s before me. Boursier-Mougenot does exactly this.

The music is live, generated entirely by chance and hydrophysics. The chiming tones—ranging from deep, resonant gongs to tiny, glass-like tinks—is remarkably complex. Interestingly, the bowls themselves aren't rare artifacts; they are low-cost kitchenware, many sourced from IKEA. Yet, by precisely tuning the water temperature, the artist coaxes pristine, natural sounds out of the ordinary.

When I visited yesterday, the sand-colored wooden viewing platforms surrounding the pools were dotted with people. Some were sitting, others supine, completely zoned out, absorbing the microtonal wash of sound. In a city that rarely asks us to slow down, Clinamen demands it. Don’t miss this opportunity to lose yourself in this mesmerizing simulation of happenstance and inevitability. Click to read a New York Times article that will answer some of the questions you might have.  

Clinamen runs through August 5 at the Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue, New York, NY Tickets Photos by Paula Alyce Scully unless noted