Engaging sight, smell, sound and touch, the Tokyo/London-based artist duo A.A. Murakami, the artists behind Studio Swine, debuts a dynamic new multi-sensory experience next month in London. Specifically created for Burlington Gardens, Silent Fall builds on A.A. Murakami’s practice of creating immersive experiences that dissolve the borders between technology and nature.

Opening 12 October during Frieze Week, the installation marks the London launch of Superblue, the ground-breaking new venture dedicated to producing, presenting and engaging audiences with experiential art, following the opening of the company’s centre in Miami in May 2021, and its forthcoming debut in New York this September in collaboration with The Shed.

‘A.A. Murakami’s practice drives us to contemplate nature and our relationship to it, in stimulating ways. Silent Fall is an extraordinary installation with which to launch Superblue in London and is representative of the kinds of single-work installations we are planning to bring to audiences around the world. We look forward to welcoming U.K. and international visitors alike to experience this new work’, said Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst, Superblue Cofounder and CEO.

Silent Fall takes its reference from The Fall from Earthly Paradise, an allegory that finds new meaning in a time of increasing concern about an imminent environmental collapse. The installation envelops audiences in a seemingly endless forest, engaging sight, smell, touch and sound to accentuate organic elements within an artificial construct. Mirrored on all sides, the installation extends toward the infinite, with trees of bone-white branches stretching out to form a futuristic landscape. Visitors walk among the trees, each of which produces hundreds of misty bubbles-serving as a metaphor for the transient, fleeting nature of existence. As each bubble is caught by hand and bursts, it unlocks scents from nature’s vast array of aromas, such as moss, rain and pine. Individually and collectively, the bubbles act as a library of scents that recall the sensation of walking through a forest.

Silent Fall forms part of an ongoing body of work the artists have pioneered called ‘Ephemeral Tech’, which are installations that employ the use of sophisticated technology and engineering with an interface of ephemeral materials. The ethereal states of matter are experienced with all the senses, culminating in immersive environments where the boundaries between technology and natural forces are dissolved to create new landscapes and unnatural phenomena.

Building on A.A. Murakami’s practice, the new installation is also inspired by the artist duo’s seminal artwork New Spring, which uses technology to evoke both primordial origins and future worlds. With that work, the artists look back to deep time, when the earliest forms of life emerged from self-organising bubbles in oceans; and forward to a possible far future, when forests might only exist as manufactured replicas. The natural and the technological coexist in a beautiful and uncanny tableau that relies on the harmonious merging of engineering, chemistry and design.

VISITING THE EXPERIENCE

Silent Fall

A new commission by A.A. Murakami, presented by Superblue

Opening 12 October

6 Burlington Gardens, adjacent to the Royal Academy of Arts

London W1S 3ET

Admission:

Tuesday – Thursday: 10 am – 7 pm

Friday – Sunday: 10 am – 8 pm