How does art give technology temperature?

Every era has its own highlights and pains: war VS peace, famine VS bumper years, economic crisis VS prosperity… Even if life is as dull as water, it is inevitable to suffer from the occasional intrusion of existentialism crisis. Or sensibility or reason, or anger or joy, abundant emotion is the most powerful motivation of artistic creation. For example, under Roscoe’s seemingly simple large color block, the stirring mood is surging; Pollock is wide open, pouring freely on the canvas. This is not the artist’s escape or vent, but rather the possibility of a cure.

Figure 1: Mark Rothko, Number 22 (Reds), oil on canvas, 297 × 272cm,1957
Figure 2: Jackson Pollock No. 17, lacquer, enamel, fiberboard, paper, aluminum, 56.5 × 72cm,1979

From November 9th, BMW presented the exhibition “Heart Without Bounds” at the West Bank Art and Design Expo, inviting three artists to use the two paths of “flow inspiration” and “perception resonance” to start a journey of emotional exploration of human-machine harmony. Driven by emotional data, artist Fei Jun created a digital emotional theater through interactive video installation works. Liu Xin turned the human communication object to the mysterious space and started a romantic dialogue with the satellite. Chen Zhe created a sensory resonance domain intertwined with light, shadow and sound for the audience. A journey of a thousand miles, from here.
#01 Technology is also sentimental

Fei Jun’s “Emotional Recurrence”, BMW Appointed Creation, 2023, BMW’s “Heart Without Boundaries” Art Exhibition Site©BMW
In the darkness stands an arched curved screen, with a colorful pattern of light flowing through the inner surface, forming a complete halo under the reflection of the ground, in which the parked car looks like a black hole coming from outside the sky. This is not a whirlpool that can make time go back, nor a corridor connecting outer space, but an interactive video device “polyphony of emotions” created by artist Fei Jun using innovative pure electric BMW i7 inspired technology. Just like its name, the light pattern flowing on the curved screen fluctuates with the mood of the people in the car.
On this creation, Fei Jun said, “Using the collision and fusion of art and technology to explore the sensibility and spirituality of technology has always been one of the themes of my creations. This BMW commissioned creation gives me the opportunity to use a car as a medium of experience and display to experiment with the boundaries and possibilities of human-computer intimacy.”

Fei Jun’s “Emotional Recurrence”, BMW Appointed Creation, 2023, BMW’s “Heart Without Boundaries” Art Exhibition Site©BMW
Count the two previous ties between BMW and the West Bank Art Fair: in 2021, it will present the half-century-long connection between the brand and art since 1975 in front of the audience with the theme of “landscape image”. The following year, BMW joined hands with outstanding artists in different fields such as Cao Fei and Jeff Koons to “generate” three unique artistic spaces, breaking through the specific image of “car, show how automotive technology fits into the artistic horizon.

Figure 1: Xu Zhen®”Mountain”, “BMW: Landscape Imagery”: “Natural Philosophy” unit, 2021
Figure 2: Fei Cao, “Quantum Garden”, “BMW: galloping outside the elephant”, 2022

This year, the brand will focus on the “emotional experience”, its keen and caring insight into the current people’s universal needs. Nowadays, “crazy literature” is a big word, and “how is your mental state?” is always on people’s lips as a greeting. This is an era that is so prone to collective confusion, and “emotional value” has become one of the most important life elements of contemporary people.

Fei Jun’s “Emotional Recurrence”, BMW Appointed Creation, 2023, BMW’s “Heart Without Boundaries” Art Exhibition Site©BMW
The work “Polyphony of Emotions” is one of a series of artistic experiments jointly conducted by Fei Jun, algebraic geometric mathematician Xu Chenyang and psychologist Liu Zhengkui. The body is transformed into an emotional interactive interface. The steering wheel collects the emotional data of the experiencer, presents it with images, and then generates emotional response images with reverse guidance in real time. “The interpretation of the two images, which are both opposite and harmonious, is like the ‘polyton’ in music, forming a harmonious psychological experience between the responses.” The artist explained.

Fei Jun’s “Emotional Recurrence”, BMW Appointed Creation, 2023, BMW’s “Heart Without Boundaries” Art Exhibition Site©BMW

# > 02 Evolution to the Future
For the exploration of the blending path of human spirituality and technological intelligence, Fei Jun talked about a “valley of terror effect”-when the similarity between machines and humans reaches a threshold, we will have emotional reactions of resistance and rejection. As in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”, the protagonist said to artificial intelligence:
“I felt endless loneliness, like a planet floating in the universe.”

The movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”

But for artist Liu Xin, the evolution of technology means another possibility-to help people reconnect with society. The work “NOAA” was created at the height of the epidemic in New York in 2020, swept by huge global events with strong uncertainty, and she felt completely isolated from the world.
At that time, Liu Xin began to climb up the roof, trying to capture the satellite “NOAA” floating in space “. Whenever it passes overhead, she can capture and decipher the signal through the receiver and convert it into noise images and audio, with which she communicates briefly.

Liu Xin’s “NOAA”, BMW Appointed Creation, 2023, BMW’s “Heart Without Borders” Art Exhibition Site©BMW
In this BMW appointment creation, inspired by BMW iDrive operating system, the artist has carried out in-depth exploration on the future travel mode and human-computer emotional relationship, and introduced human-computer interaction experience into a deeper relationship context. Satellite signals dance wildly in the uninhabited land, linking with each other, sending out signals, and chasing each other along tracks.

In the dark, the spiral halo shines with warm fluorescence, and the wide electronic screen behind it presents a visualized signal image, accompanied by bursts of noise audio, which is the satellite’s whisper to humans on the surface. Thinking that beyond the distance of light years, there are still human groups watching, Liu Xin feels that the fractured world has repositioned and connected and is slowly being stitched back into a whole.

Liu Xin’s “NOAA”, BMW Appointed Creation, 2023, BMW’s “Heart Without Borders” Art Exhibition Site©BMW
How to move from the present to the future and finally to the ultimate universe is a distant goal that people are constantly trying to explore, and BMW’s pioneering luxury design and inspired technology make people’s reverie of the future visible. As Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the father of space, said: “the earth is the cradle of mankind, but mankind can not stay in the cradle forever.”

Liu Xin’s “NOAA”, BMW Appointed Creation, 2023, BMW’s “Heart Without Borders” Art Exhibition Site©BMW
#03 Where?
When we arrive at the place where the stars are set in the night, we can see that artist Chen Zhe’s imagination of sensory resonance in the pure electric era is constantly intertwining and evolving, stretching to depth, and turning into an invisible “future soundscape”.
Walking into the exhibition hall, it is like breaking into a cosmic galaxy. Five devices of different scales and heights are hanging from each other. For example, a planet divided into two parts, light and shadow pour down from the serpentine pattern on the side, and five groups of sounds hidden in different directions draw tracks on the ground. The work “Road” (Passage) is inspired by BMW sound simulation system, which guides the audience into the journey by human sound and light and shadow, presenting a field that stimulates emotional imagination.

“How can sound, the most invisible and permeable medium, give drivers a nostalgic and fresh emotional experience in the everyday ordinary driving experience? It was this idea that lit up my idea this time.” Chen Zhe explained that when people get used to the usual navigation voice, these sentences are imitated by AI programs in a fake and real tone, and the original language with directive meaning seems to have gained some freedom.

“Where are you going in a shiny car in the night?” was Jack Kerouac’s question of the times. For decades in a flash, BMW has answered this question by adhering to the long-term people-oriented concept and innovative spirit when crisis and vitality coexist.

Since 1975, when I became associated with art and went through three West Bank Art Fairs, the brand has been constantly exploring the ecological possibility of harmony and organic between art and technology, people and cars. Today, the exhibition “Heart Without Bounding” is on display at this West Bank Art Fair, launching an infinite reverie about future travel with the advanced perception ability brought by intelligent technology. Where will we go? The road is at our feet, and the future is ahead.

(Source: Harper’s Bazaar Art)