The Roman philosopher Lucretius called it clinamen — the random swerve of atoms that makes collision, and therefore everything, possible. Céleste Boursier-Mougenot borrowed the word for his most celebrated installation. Inside the Wade Thompson Drill Hall, the concept becomes audible.

Boursier-Mougenot was trained as a musician before becoming an artist — and that dual formation is the architecture of his practice. He builds systems, sets conditions, and steps back. The performers are the bowls, the water, the current, the hall itself. The visitor is invited to listen, to watch the process that generates the sound, and encounter the result of pure physical indeterminacy. The music exists because the bowls exist. The bowls exist because the water moves. The water moves because of a current so gentle it is barely perceptible. What Artforum called "an almost sacred encounter with art and nature" is also, quietly, a lesson in how the world composes itself.

This is the largest iteration of Clinamen to date — a work that has traveled from the Bourse de Commerce in Paris to institutions across Europe and now fills one of New York's most architecturally extraordinary spaces. The Wade Thompson Drill Hall — 55,000 square feet of vaulted, industrial grandeur. The scale doesn't diminish the intimacy of the work. It amplifies it. You hear the bowls before you see them. You find yourself adjusting your pace, your breathing, your expectations.

Boursier-Mougenot represented France at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015 and is represented by Paula Cooper Gallery in New York. His practice — which includes from here to ear, a walk-in aviary where live zebra finches land on amplified electric guitars and generate spontaneous rock compositions, and offroad, in which three autonomous grand pianos move slowly around a gallery floor — consistently asks the same question in different registers: what happens when you remove the composer from the composition, and let the world make its own music?