Floating World
In A.A. Murakami’s Floating World, giant fog-filled bubbles ripple across a darkened landscape. The seemingly supernatural forms are powered by an array of custom made autonomous machines, which are intermittently revealed throughout the work, puffing dense pockets of fog into shimmering iridescent trails and orbs. Each unique and fleeting, these ethereal forms swim through the air before popping and dissolving just as quickly as they appear.
Floating World is a large scale installation currently exhibiting at M+ Museum and is part of an ongoing series by Tokyo and London-based artist duo A.A.Murakami/Studio Swine that they call Ephemeral Tech, a body of work that employs technology and tangible materials—such as fog and scent—to simulate the sublime of the natural world. The fragility of the materials and the physics of the real-world forces that shape them play on all the human senses and encourage a heightened awareness around the ephemeral nature of our everyday existence.
ABOUT A. A. MURAKAMI
A.A.Murakami was established in 2020 by Azusa Murakami and Alexander Groves. Their immersive installations fused science and art to create their ongoing Ephemeral Tech series; a type of work which combines their own technology with ethereal materials or states of matter which play with all the senses to create unnatural phenomena. They currently have a solo show called Floating World at M+ Museum Hong Kong and are going to be taking part in the Beijing Art and Technology Biennale this November.
They are also the artists behind experimental design practice Studio Swine. Studio Swine’s films have been awarded at Cannes and other film festivals around the world. Their work has been featured in both the Venice Art and Architecture Biennales and in the permanent collections of MOMA New York, Pompidou Centre in Paris, Vitra Design Museum Germany and M+ Hong Kong.
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Support for Midnight Moment is provided in part by the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; and the Times Square Advertising Coalition.
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