By Tom Morton

A term whose scientific usage dates from the Enlightenment era, ‘symbiosis’ describes a productive relationship between two different entities, from which new, previously unimagined possibilities arise. Such a dynamic is at the core of Symbiotic Drive (2026), a major work by the Anglo-Japanese duo A.A. Murakami (Alexander Groves and Azusa Murakami) made in collaboration with BMW, which will debut at Art Basel in Basel this June. Pioneers of ‘Ephemeral Tech’, the artists are celebrated for their immersive, multisensory installations, in which they employ custom-built technology to choreograph transient materials and states of matter, among them air, vapor, and ethereally floating orbs of liquid soap. Expert engineering is braided with a deeply poetic sensibility, and the result is a body of work that, for all its future-facing innovation, speaks to a timeless sense of wonder at the vitality – and the evanescence – of the world in which we live.

As A.A. Murakami relate over email, Symbiotic Drive takes the form of an ‘amorphous metal sculpture resembling the curved half of a sea shellwashed onto a beach. Across its surface, tiny apertures release mist-filled bubbles that slowly grow, detach, and descend, sliding across the metallic skin before dissolving into the surrounding air.’ While these bubbles ‘emerge from mechanical systems, their technological origin paradoxically makes them feel more alive.’ For the artists, this element of the installation embodies ‘something emotionally universal.’ Simultaneously ‘fragile and cosmic,’ bubbles ‘contain breath, atmosphere, and reflection, yet exist only momentarily.’ To deploy them as a material is ‘a way of giving form to existence itself: something beautiful, temporary, and impossible to fully possess.’ Symbiotic Drive, then, is not a fixed and inert artwork, but one ‘in a constant state of becoming,’ in which the boundaries between ‘object and environment, permanence and ephemerality’ blur, with astonishing results. 

Reflecting on their partnership with BMW for this project, A.A. Murakami note the ‘natural connection between BMW’s culture of engineering and our own practice. Much of our work involves designing complex mechanical systems that ultimately produce something emotional, atmospheric, and intangible.’ The duo ‘were particularly interested in exploring the relationship between precision engineering and unpredictable natural behavior. In many ways, that dialogue sits at the heart of both the project and the collaboration itself.’

The concept of symbiosis is particularly pertinent, here. ‘In our work, technology does not exist simply to display an effect. Instead, it creates the conditions from which phenomena can emerge. Once a bubble is released into the air, its final form no longer belongs to the machine. It belongs to gravity, airflow, temperature, entropy, and chance.’ As the artists explain, ‘That relationship between control and surrender is central to Symbiotic Drive. The work explores the idea that technological systems and natural forces are not opposites, but collaborators.’ The title of the project also speaks to what they describe as ‘a broader cultural relationship between mobility, engineering, and life itself. Cars are often understood as symbols of control and precision, while bubbles represent fragility and impermanence.’ We might, then, understand the duo’s partnership with BMW as creating a fertile ‘tension between permanence and dissolution, object and event.’

Symbiotic Drive is only the latest example of what A.A. Murakami describe as BMW’s ‘extraordinary legacy of working with artists, from Robert Rauschenberg to Gerhard Richter,’ a history that ‘makes this collaboration especially meaningful for us.’ Indeed, this year marks the 50th anniversary of BMW’s Art Car initiative, which has seen some 20 leading artists from across the globe collaborate with the BMW group’s engineering and design teams on a series of customized cars, in a celebration of artistic and automotive innovation. One common denominator among the participants is a fascination with how technological systems might be engaged as tools, collaborators, and catalysts for new ways of thinking and making. As Julie Mehretu remarked in a press release, ‘the whole project is about invention, about imagination, about pushing the limits of what is possible. I don’t think of [my BMW M Hybrid V8 race] car as something you would exhibit. I’m thinking of it as something that will race in Le Mans. It’s a performance painting.’ Similarly, Jeff Koons said of his BMW M6 GT3: ‘You can participate with it, add to it, and let yourself transcend with its energy. There is a lot of power under that hood, and I want to let my ideas transcend with the car.’

The Chinese multimedia artist Cao Fei, who is the currently the subject of a major survey exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Basel, took part in the Art Car initiative in 2017, when she customized a BMW M6 GT3. As she notes over email, ‘For me, technology is not about dazzling special effects. Rather, it is an entry point through which I observe, intervene in, and reconstruct reality. Today, technology has effectively become the “base reality” of our everyday life: robots, algorithms, and data flows are reshaping human labor, emotions, and even our sense of time. In this context, my work seeks to move within these technologically constructed worlds of efficiency and performance, while returning to, and rediscovering, things that are often overlooked by systems, such as memory, emotion, and genuine sensory perception.’

Cao Fei recalls her collaboration with BMW as ‘a very special and memorable experience. At the time, I deliberately chose not to apply a traditional painted design to the car. Instead, I created what might appear, to the naked eye, as an “unattractive” car.’ As she explains, her Art Car ‘can only be fully experienced through an augmented reality application on a mobile phone. Without the app, it appears simply as a new black GT3. Yet it embodies one of the most emblematic technological features of our era: augmented reality. Through this approach, I wanted to use technology to inscribe the marks of our time onto the Art Car, while juxtaposing industrial production aesthetics, the belief in speed, and high technologization with human vulnerability.’

More recently, Cao Fei extended this exploration of technology and perception through Quantum Garden (2022), a digital artwork created for BMW’s ‘Digital Art Mode’. Displayed within the interior of selected vehicles, the work transforms the car into an immersive digital environment of drifting light and abstract forms, reflecting her long-standing interest in virtual realities and technologically mediated experience.

To tell the story of art, we must tell the story of how artists have adopted emergent technologies, using them not only to reconfigure their own practices, but also how we see the world. As BMW’s collaborations with contemporary artists demonstrate, the symbiosis between art and tech inaugurates both material innovation, and new visions of reality. What, we might wonder, will it show us next?