BMW Brings Digital Art Into Vehicles for the First Time with Cao Fei’s Quantum Garden

For years, BMW has stationed itself at the intersection of two equally popular worlds: automobiles and high art. That overlap is perhaps most famously embodied by the company’s Art Cars, for which artists collaborate with the German automaker to create a single, one-of-a-kind BMW model. Alexander Calder was the first to take on the challenge in 1975; since then, other participating artists have included Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jenny Holzer, and Robert Rauschenberg, among others.

Now, BMW’s Art Car ethos is hitting the mass consumer market. Unveiled at the 2022 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the new BMW iX M60 inaugurates Digital Art Mode, which transforms the inside of the car into an immersive digital installation by Chinese multimedia artist Cao Fei. For now, Cao’s work, Quantum Garden, will be the sole artwork available in selected BMW models, including the recently launched 7 Series; but BMW drivers should expect to see Digital Art Mode continue to develop.

Quantum Garden is just the latest in a series of fruitful collaborations between Cao and BMW. Cao created the most recent Art Car model for BMW, ingeniously off-roading the use of augmented reality when she incorporated it into her design for the 2017 BMW M6 GT3. She also served on the jury for the recently founded BMW M4 GT4 design competition. In addition, her first major solo show in the UK was commissioned and presented by Rolls-Royce’s Muse art program. (Rolls-Royce is a subsidiary of BMW Group.)

Cao’s freewheeling, psychedelic work trades canvases for screens and nostalgic musings for fantastical utopian futures—a perfect fit with BMW’s bleeding-edge creative vision.

“Last year, when BMW was thinking about the concept of Art Mode, they thought I might be a suitable artist for this project, because the future mode of driving is very closely connected with digitalization,” Cao tells ARTnews.

But, while Cao is accustomed to working in the digital realm, Quantum Garden indisputably presented new challenges for the Beijing-based artist. First of all, the experience would be both mass-produced and mass-programmed in selected BMW models. Cao had to fit her work to specific screen dimensions and keep Art Mode’s practical limitations front of mind at all times.

“I don’t want it to distract drivers. But to some extent, that’s a very difficult challenge for an artist, because you create art to catch people’s eye,” Cao says. “It’s not like regular artwork—you need to consider functionality and safety features.”

To this end, a BMW spokesperson confirmed that the current iteration of Art Mode moves more slowly while the car is in motion, so as not to distract the driver. Cao’s design—Technicolor 3-D streaks and shapes, undulating over a pitch-black backdrop—is designed to be visible yet unobtrusive, no matter the time of day.

Art Mode joins other mood-oriented My Modes experienced inside the new line of BMW vehicles, which can change multiple settings in the cab—lighting, sound design, and more—with the click of a button. Quantum Garden is shown on the car’s main display, the imagery enhanced through these multisensory settings. The abstract artwork evokes the brilliance of a restless skyline at night, albeit observed from a tranquil distance. The new 7 Series especially, with its innovative light features across the cockpit, allows for an immersive experience of the piece.

“I would describe the color effects as quite meditative,” Cao says. “It’s not meant to grab [people’s] attention, but to provide a relaxing and reflective atmosphere.”

That design task weighed heavily on Cao while creating Quantum Garden. BMW first reached out to her about the project last year, at a time when much of the world was still sheltering in place and curbing in-person interaction. She began thinking about the automobile’s expressive potential as a space that was mobile but all one’s own—an agent of connection at a time when many were feeling more estranged than ever.

“I see this work as releasing a kind of quantum energy through [driving],” she says. “It’s a way of spreading my vision of healing and connecting people. You can see it in the art: Different dots connect, circle, and interact in the bigger picture.”

If Quantum Garden can be some small part of making tentative steps toward that reconnection, Cao will feel like she achieved what she set out to do when she took the commission last year.

“I hope that, no matter how far we are from one another, people will come together to bring back our lives,” she says. “I’d like this quantum garden to bloom.”

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