A.A. Murakami: Crafting Ephemeral Worlds of Art and Technology

In a world where art, science, and technology collide, few creators manage to blend these elements as seamlessly as A.A. Murakami. The dynamic duo—Alexander and Azusa Murakami—brings together the East and West, merging their unique backgrounds in art and architecture to create immersive, large-scale installations.

Since their early days as experimental designers with Studio Swine, the pair has roamed the globe, exploring sustainable materials and pushing the boundaries of experiential art. Now, with their eponymous art practice, A.A. Murakami invites us into an ethereal space where nature meets technology, and the ephemeral meets the profound.

In this exclusive conversation with Red Eye Mag, Alexander and Azusa discuss their inspirations, the philosophy behind their work, and their vision for the future of experiential spaces. From the fluid beauty of Infinity Blue to the captivating narratives of The Passage of RA, their journey is a testament to the transformative power of art in our Anthropocene era.

Where does the name A.A. Murakami come from? How did this duo of the East (Tokyo) and the West (London) come to life? What are your academic backgrounds, and how did this all come together? What’s the story?

A.A.Murakami stands for Alexander and Azusa Murakami. We met at the Royal College of Art for a design products Master's in 2010. Alexander came from Art and Azusa from Architecture. We started an experimental design studio together in 2010 called Studio Swine and lived around the world researching materials and exploring sustainable futures, from making a mobile Foundary that ran on waste cooking oil on the streets of Sao Paulo, to wild rubber from the Amazon rainforest, human hair markets of Shandong Province China, trawling for sea plastic on fishing boats in the Atlantic. In 2019 we started an art practice called A.A. Murakami that specialised in art and technology to make large-scale immersive installations.

I was amazed by Infinity Blue (2018). It provides a subliminal and calming experience, especially in chaotic urban spaces. How does it feel to offer such a slow, transcendental yet thought-provoking experience to society?

We don’t set out to make calming installations, but invariably they end up being calming somehow. I think because we use technology but also ephemeral materials and fleeting states of matter. There is a moment where the digital information cedes control to natural forces, such as forming bubbles or fog rings to create ‘unnatural phenomena’ and they unfold at a pace that is in keeping with the environment they are interacting with, more akin to the experience of being immersed in nature.

With “New Spring ”versus now “The Passage of RA ”. A lot has changed. It was evident that you have a very transcendental experience to provide, which in return brings a sense of newfound intelligence in our ongoing Anthropocene era. Your artwork communicates the new paradigms we live in now. What kind of guidelines or limitations do you see yourself working through?

We set certain guidelines that are sometimes unspoken intuitive agreements between the two of us and sometimes the result of discussion. Push what is possible, take something to the furthest we can manage within the restraints of time and budget and technical feasibility but push what those restraints are. Do something that can speak to anyone, don’t get trapped into making something technically clever that is only appreciated by people with the technical knowledge, a ‘inside baseball’ type scenario. Anyone walking off the street with no prior knowledge of your practice or art even should get something meaningful from the experience without having to read an informational text.

Don’t make anything cheesy, and at the same time don’t be afraid to try to express something genuinely felt or profound, it’s a fine line but we must be prepared to be vulnerable and not play it safe with the tentative halfway house of ironic detachment.

Follow your intuitive feeling for what excites you, that is the most likely way you will excite others and

if not at least you have pleased yourself without regrets.

Going through your work, I'm suddenly reminded of the ‘Carbon Based Lifeforms’, a Swedish electronic music duo formed in Gothenburg in 1996 by Johannes Hedberg and Daniel Vadestrid. I was assuming your certain influences and inspiration for why and what you do that you do, but I could not quite pinpoint except just wondering, Could you please take our readers through what makes you build these worlds and share it with the public occasionally?

We are not aware of them but will check them out! Personally, I draw a lot of inspiration from the work of Cormac McCarthy, his blend of science and literature is unsurpassed. Carl Sagan, Fellini, Matthew Barney, and Rem Koolhaus to name a few.

Your kind of Ephemeral tech uses technology in combination with ethereal materials of fog, plasma, etc. What is your wildest imagination with your given tools and assets, having this clear that you have a modern and experimental touch to your approach?

The wildest imagined installation we have thought of is perhaps possible so it would be a shame to share it and not just do it.

Could you please take us through the essence of Floating World or what did you discover through making the work at M+?

Upon completing the work and reflecting on it in the space we released the importance of time as the medium.

Time is one of the greatest mysteries—it hasn’t been discovered, only experienced. We don't know where it resides, how it behaves, or whether it even had a beginning. Did time exist before the Big Bang, or did it unfurl alongside the expansion of space? And what becomes of time inside a black hole, being a point of singularity where it's thought that even time ends.

Time itself is invisible, and we create devices to make it tangible. But clocks don’t truly measure time; they measure the behaviour of matter—the oscillations of a quartz crystal, the swing of a pendulum, or the flow of sand through an hourglass. Does time have a material presence like water molecules in a river's flow; a yet-undiscovered particle, or is it as intangible as information?

In these bubbles, time briefly takes material form, for a fleeting moment as each bubble comes into being, and slips out of existence.

Where the artists of the Light and Space Movement used space and light as both material and subject, we, in the same vein, treat time itself as a material.

Interview by @_jagrati_

Image courtesy of @a.a.murakami

RED•EYE WORLD