In Australia, trees are blooming that release glowing bubbles filled with mist. In Venice, the natural patterns of Aral Sea shells are transformed into a large-scale textile design. Behind these unusual works are Azusa Murakami and Alexander Groves — artists and designers who combine art, science and technology to explore the wondrous mechanisms of nature. On 6 November their installation New Spring continues to attract the attention of visitors to Newcastle Art Gallery, and already on 14 November in Taiwan will open After the Rain — an exhibition that for the first time in Asia brings together the two main strands of their work.
Seeing what usually remains unnoticed
At the heart of A.A. Murakami's artistic thinking lies an unusual way of observing the surrounding world. The artists are not simply inspired by natural forms — they study the processes through which those forms arise. They investigate patterns of growth, changes in materials, the interplay of physical forces and time, and then translate scientific observations into the language of art.
This is especially evident in the work The Sun Sets in a Shell, presented in the Uzbekistan pavilion The Aural Sea at the Venice Biennale 2026. The starting point was the zebra mussel — a striped mussel that lives in the Aral Sea. Murakami and Groves studied scientific models of how its shell forms and developed a special knitting algorithm that reproduces the biochemical patterns of its formation.
Thus a textile design emerged in which spirals, waves, triangular forms and repeating fractal structures convey the complex geometry of natural growth. But the most interesting thing is that these patterns are not static in their origin. Changes in temperature, salinity, water acidity and calcium content influence the formation of the shell, leaving in its structure a kind of record of environmental conditions.
The result is a remarkable fusion of scientific research and artistic perception: the shell becomes a natural archive, and the algorithm helps reveal the beauty of processes that the human eye usually does not notice. The artists translate this invisible complexity into material form, combining digital technologies and traditional tactile craft.
When technology allows nature to reveal itself
Another side of their thinking is revealed by New Spring — an installation that can currently be seen at Newcastle Art Gallery in Australia. The exhibition opened on 26 September and will run until 31 January 2027.
Three metal structures resembling trees release glowing bubbles filled with mist. They emerge among the branches, drift smoothly through space, change shape and dissolve. Then new ones appear.
This is not a depiction of blossoming, nor a mechanical imitation of a tree. The artists create their own system in which a technological process becomes an almost living phenomenon. The viewer watches not a finished work, but its continuous emergence.
Here the Japanese concept of mono no aware reveals itself with particular clarity mono no aware — a delicate ability to notice the beauty of the moment, to feel its uniqueness and to perceive change as a natural part of life. One bubble disappears, but the next arises in its place. And attention gradually shifts from the desire to hold on to what has been seen toward the capacity to be here and now, to notice what is happening and to open oneself to what will appear next.
There is a very positive idea in this: beauty does not end with a single moment. It continues in new forms. A.A. Murakami's technologies make it possible to literally see this principle — nature does not stop creating, and each moment becomes part of the next.
This is precisely the approach the artists call Ephemeral Tech — "ephemeral technologies." They develop their own mechanisms in order to create phenomena out of mist, air, light and other mutable states of matter. Technology here does not put itself on display; rather, it opens up for people a new way of interacting with the physical world.
One union — a shared view of the world
Behind A.A. Murakami stand Azusa Murakami and Alexander Groves, who met in 2010 at London's Royal College of Art. In 2011 they founded Studio Swine — an experimental design studio — and in 2020 they created A.A. Murakami as an independent artistic practice in which technologies help shape new physical and sensory experiences.
What makes their collaboration interesting is how broadly they explore the surrounding world. The artists study local industries, crafts, natural resources and ways of working with materials. They are interested not only in the form of a future object, but in the entire history behind it: from the origins of the raw material and the particularities of the local environment to human labor, cultural traditions and the possibilities of new production.
In Studio Swine's projects, the materials used receive an unexpected continuation. In Sea Chair plastic waste collected in the ocean is turned into furniture. In Can City aluminum cans are melted down in a mobile foundry powered by used vegetable oil. And in Hair Highway human hair is explored as a renewable alternative to materials such as tortoiseshell and tropical wood.
Each of these projects begins with a question that goes far beyond design: what do we know about the material we use? How did it come to be? How is it connected to a place, to people and to nature? And what possibilities would open up if we looked at it differently?
This approach unfolds on a particularly large scale in Fordlandia — a project that turns to the history of the town of the same name in the Amazon jungle. It was founded in 1928 by the American industrialist Henry Ford, who hoped to create his own base for the production of natural rubber for the automobile industry.
The story of Fordlandia became an example of the complex interaction between industrial plans and the natural environment. The attempt to transplant an American model of a town and organized production into the Amazon ran up against the climate, the particularities of the tropical ecosystem and the problems of cultivating rubber trees. The settlement was ultimately abandoned.
Murakami and Groves turn to this history not merely as an episode of the industrial past. They explore the possibilities of natural rubber, local methods of obtaining it, the work of latex tappers and the materials of the Amazon forest. The installation creates a distinctive space where natural resources, industrial history and cultural ideas of progress meet in a single work of art.
Here the scale of their interests becomes especially clear: behind a single material they are able to see an entire geography, a history of human decisions, economic systems and the relationship between nature and production.
A New Encounter in Taichung
On 14 November, at the CMP Inspiration museum in Taiwan, there will open After the Rain. For the first time in Asia, the exhibition will bring together the duo's two practices — Studio Swine and A.A. Murakami — and make it possible to see their shared creative method in a single space.
The exhibition will present a large-scale version of New Spring about six metres high, as well as Studio Swine projects, among them Sea Chair, Can City, Hair Highway and the textile work A Thousand Layers of Stomach. A separate place will be given to Fordlandia.
The title "After the Rain" acquires a special meaning here. Rain changes the state of the surrounding world: the air becomes cleaner, the earth receives moisture, and familiar surfaces reveal new shades and textures. It is a moment of renewal, when one can notice what had previously remained outside one's attention.
And perhaps this is exactly how one can describe the entire creative path of Murakami and Groves. In some projects they explore the origin of matter and the possibilities of its new application. In others they create phenomena that cannot be held in a constant form. But in both cases they are interested in one thing: how the world is structured, how new forms arise in it, and how much that is astonishing lies hidden in the processes we usually pass by.
Art as the possibility of seeing more
The works of A.A. Murakami and Studio Swine remind us that art today can be born not only from an artistic image, but also from a scientific discovery, an engineering experiment, the study of a material, or attentive observation of nature.
Murakami and Groves do not try to separate man from the surrounding world. On the contrary, they show how closely natural processes, technology, culture and everyday life are interconnected. Their works offer not ready-made answers, but new ways of looking, exploring and noticing interconnections.
And perhaps the most interesting thing in their work is the ability to change the viewer's very point of view. To see in a seashell the history of an entire sea, in used material the possibility of a new birth, and in a vanishing bubble not a loss, but the beginning of the next moment.
The world never stops creating something new. Sometimes it is enough simply to learn to notice it.
