BMW Art Car #18 has been revealed. The masterpiece of Chinese multimedia artist Cao Fei, the youngest-ever BMW Art Car artist, was presented on May 31 at the Minsheng Art Museum in Beijing, China. It is... um… interesting
With great fanfare, BMW announced back in November 2015 the artists chosen to create the newest BMW Art Cars. American artist John Baldessari and Cao Fei were selected to join a very exclusive club—professional artists invited by BMW to use its cars as a rolling canvas; to create art that not only had the form envisioned by the artist, but the function required of a real BMW race car.
Baldessari presented his version of the BMW M6 GT3 earlier this year. You may recall that it was festooned with large colored dots with the word "FAST" on one side and a picture of the car on the other. Baldessari's style is described as "minimalist" and in that regard, he did not disappoint. The Baldessari M6 GT3 was, if nothing else, a reliable race car. It finished 8th in the GTLM class at the 2017 Rolex Daytona 24 Hours. We will leave judgment on the car as art to more qualified reviewers, but one thing it did accomplish was generate more excitement about the BMW Art Car that Cao Fei would create.
Cao Fei went in a completely different direction; not only different from Baldessari, but also different from every other artist who produced a BMW Art Car. In line with her multimedia background, Cao Fei chose to combine three different elements into one complete, but never completely finished work of art.
BMW is certainly excited about its newest Art Car. At the unveiling, Dr. Ian Robertson, BMW AG Board of Management member for BMW sales and marketing, said, "We were thrilled by the decision of an independent jury of international museum directors to have nominated Cao Fei. Considered as a lucky number in China, her vehicle is the official 18th rolling sculpture of the collection. For her project, Cao Fei chose an unprecedented and immersive approach, empowering the viewer to engage with the artwork through cutting-edge technology. This is truly a BMW Art Car for the 21st century!”
Cao Fei explained her masterpiece, commenting, “To me, light represents thoughts. As the speed of thoughts cannot be measured, the #18 Art Car questions the existence of the boundaries of the human mind. We are entering a new age, where the mind directly controls objects and where thoughts can be transferred, such as unmanned operations and artificial intelligence. Which attitudes and temperaments hold the key to opening the gateway to the new age?”
As BMW describes it, the final work consists of three components: a video featuring a time-traveling spiritual practitioner; augmented reality comprising colorful light particles and streams, and the BMW M6 GTS in non-reflective carbon black.
If you look at the car, sitting by itself like every other BMW Art Car, you might think that the company sent the wrong car; there's no art on it. That's because to see the entire piece and to view the time traveler's designs superimposed on and around the car, BMW says you need the iOS app "BMW Art Car #18."
The app allows you to view the augmented reality. When viewing the app information in iTunes, the screen says, "To experience the 18th BMW Art Car, please follow the instructions in the mobile app." So far so good. When the App is downloaded to your iPhone or iPad, and you press the button for "English," you are rewarded with a further instruction in real tiny letters that say, "To obtain a full experience, interact with the BMW Art Car #18 on-site."
So to use your iOS device and the BMW Art Car #18 app, you must be where the car is. Then when you look at the car through your device using the device's camera, you will see the light swirls and streams as augmented reality around the car.
We don't know when we will be in the presence of the car; so fortunately, BMW made a video of what we presume you might see if you were where the car was and looked at it through your iOS device. View that here:
If you are in China now, or at Art Basel in Switzerland later in June, or at the FIA FT World Cup in Macau in November, you might be able to see Art car #18 in person and use your iPhone to transform it from a dull black M6 into a colorful, augmented reality artistic masterpiece. After Macau, we're sure it will pop up at various venues around the world. Hopefully, we will be able to see it in person because until that happens, we won't get the full interactive multimedia experience.
After 42 years of conventional BMW Art Cars; that is, a BMW with a fixed, unchanging paint scheme designed by a well-known artist, maybe it's about time that BMW—a self-professed leader in innovation and out-of-the-box thinking—turned a BMW Art Car over to an innovative, out-of-the-box thinker like Cao Fei. It makes sense.
We're still waiting to see the car in person, however, before rendering a final opinion.—Scott Blazey
[Photos and video courtesy of BMW AG.]
