A.A. Murakami’s robotics bring life to their installations
A.A. Murakami discusses using robotics and physics to invoke nature in their installations, a technique and practice they describe as ‘ephemeral tech.’ During Milan Design Week 2025, the art collective exhibits two scenographic installations at Museo della Permanente for the show Opposites United: Eclipse of Perceptions, presented with Kia Design and Zero. Several days after the event, Alexander Groves, the half of A.A. Murakami alongside Azusa Murakami and the art practice of Studio Swine, sits down with designboom to rehash the nature-inspired robotics installation. It’s a two-part show that visitors go through. The first is The Cave. Just like its name, the only light illuminating the space is the saturated, sunset-colored backlighting along the wall. It’s enough to cast a shadow and form the silhouettes of the replicated ancient animal bones, surfacing from the pool of oil in the middle of the room.
These artifacts don’t emerge on their own since a large-scale automaton with robotic limbs brings them up, making their outlines visible to the visitors. Alexander Groves tells us that it’s his and Azusa Murakami’s way of showing their interest in the dawn of humanity. ‘We were interested in making replicas of these bones and hearing these ancient sounds, having them emerge from a pool of oil on these robotic limbs that almost have the appearance of bird legs. We wanted to create a very evocative cinematic space using these almost haunting sounds as well as red light flooding the space,’ he says. The robotic installation by A.A. Murakami puts a tech twist on the customary way of showcasing historic artifacts. ‘There’s a divergent moment where technology itself could become conscious. It was using the ancient past to think about the far future,’ adds Alex Groves.
Azusa Murakami and Alexander Groves of A.A. Murakami (Studio Swine) | all images courtesy of A.A. Murakami
Contrast plays between ‘the cave’ and ‘beyond the horizon’
Past The Cave, visitors walk through yet another vaguely lit room named Beyond the Horizon. A different ambiance plays the tone of the space. Instead of the light piercing through the viewers’ vision, large bubbles float above their heads, passing for a few seconds before they pop and the mist comes out, forming the shape of clouds. On the walls, hanging automata enable the robotic installation of A.A. Murakami to work. The art collective’s Alex Groves compares the amorphous bubbles to moons gliding through the space. The room contrasts The Cave. Whereas Beyond the Horizon brims with cool blue, seemingly moonlight, The Cave shines like a radiant sunset, invoking the glow of a fire. ‘We wanted to set up a contrast, so you had an interesting journey through the space. It’s setting up a distinction between these two things so they enhance each other—the difference,’ Alex Groves tells us.
The bubbles glide at a glacial pace before they slowly disperse into thin air like fog. The British artist explains to designboom that A.A. Murakami uses a mixture of ingredients to make them for the robotic installations. ‘When you make giant bubbles, it needs to be a more viscous substance that retains water. It’s much thicker. There are different emulsifying agents, but nothing toxic. It’s all safe. Essentially, it’s soaps and surfactants – things that reduce the surface tension of water. It no longer makes a droplet but forms a thin skin,’ he says. It’s not their first time blowing large bubbles into the air, citing their Floating World exhibition at M+ Museum Hong Kong between August 2024 and February 2025. They’ve already produced installations with small bubbles too, one of the first times being New Spring and New Spring Miami (2017). Here, the tree-like structure features branches shaped as curved tubes hanging above the visitors heads. Slowly, these poles pipe out small bubbles, landing on the floor before they lightly burst.
Beyond the Horizon (2024) at Museo della Permanente | exhibition photos by DSL Studio, unless stated otherwise
Ephemeral tech in A.A. Murakami’s robotic installations
During our conversation with A.A. Murakami’s Alex Groves, he mentions the term ‘Ephemeral tech’ a few times. It’s one way they describe what they do, using technology with ethereal materials to create ‘fleeting moments’ and ‘new, unnatural phenomena.’ Ephemeral, when looked up, means transient or brief, like floating bubbles that slowly land or burst, ancient bones that languidly emerge from a pool of oil, or cannoned fog that glacially makes its way in the middle of the room. Tech comes in different forms. With a few of the nature-inspired robotic installations of A.A. Murakami, it can be through the use of automated limbs or mechanisms.
Alex Groves sums up ephemeral tech by saying, ‘when you witness the digital world—watching something on a screen—you’re aware it can’t fade. You can pause it, revisit it, rewind it—it’ll be exactly the same. It doesn’t die. When you encounter nature, if you come across a fox, for example, and you both stop and stare at each other, there’s this awareness that this is an incredibly unlikely gathering of atoms in front of you. You’re both sharing a moment that will never come again. We’re interested in using technology to give you an experience almost like nature. When you’re in the presence of a bubble, you know what’s going to happen. It’s got a life to it. You watch the creation of it, and you watch it dissolve and disappear. The fleeting nature of it adds to its beauty.’
the bubbles glide at a glacial pace before they slowly disperse into thin air like fog
A.A. Murakami is the art division and practice of Studio Swine. Alex Groves and Azusa Murakami are both the masterminds behind these two. Whereas Studio Swine focuses on materiality and how materials can make viewers feel, A.A Murakami and its nature-inspired, tech-driven, and even robotics, installations allow people to live through what they feel. ‘We don’t want to make things on a screen or use projectors, which is what we consider inherited tech. The way we use technology is about bringing materiality into it; not just materials, but states of matter,’ says Alex Groves. He clarifies, however, that their approach isn’t solely robotics because their installations aren’t kinetic in the traditional sense of using robotics to create kinetic art. They use instead these limbs and automated parts to deliver a space, one where visitors meet with fog rings, bubbles, and plasma, the natural phenomena.
When asked if A.A. Murakami considers robotics as co-creators of their installations, Alex Groves tells us it’s about balance. ‘You rely on these robots and technologies to take on part of what’s happening. The other part is, you want physics and the natural world—the laws of nature—to take on the rest. We’re interested in when digital code and electronics transition into the physical realm, where it’s about fluid dynamics, entropy, and intermolecular forces all at play. That’s when it becomes really interesting, because then you get a dance—like how mesmerizing it is to watch the surface of the ocean. There’s a constant dance between the intermolecular forces. We want to do both, but we want to create unnatural phenomena—things that wouldn’t be there without the use of technology,’ he says.
the work appears in the exhibition Opposites United: Eclipse of Perceptions during Milan Design Week 2025
The British artist looks back at how A.A. Murakami comes to life. He and Azusa Murakami founded Studio Swine in 2010. He is armed with fine arts history, and she with architecture, but they both have a background in design after studying at the Royal College of Art. They were interested in exploring materials, shaping them in a certain kind of utility or functionality, hence the birth of Studio Swine, ‘We liked the archetypes of furniture and using furniture as a way of exploring the world around us and possible futures,’ Alex Groves shares with us.
They had a run for it over years, even living in São Paulo and made a furnace that could melt down cans on the street using waste vegetable oil. Then, they moved to Shanghai, explored human hair, and made Hair Highway, reimagining human hair with bio resin, all the while inspired by the notion of the ancient Silk Road. ‘When we started doing more immersive installations that didn’t have such a clear question-and-answer structure, they were more about creating a feeling, an immersive world,’ the British artist says in light of A.A. Murakami being shaped naturally after their New Spring installation in 2017, showcased in Milan.
the display showcases giant, amorphous bubbles emerging from hanging automata and transforming into clouds
The art collective started working for and with art museums, even having robotic installations and permanent collections in MOMA in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and M+ in Hong Kong. On May 4th, 2025, they host their first solo presentation in a U.S. museum and their largest to date anywhere. It’s in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, an exhibition named ‘Floating World,’ running until September 21st, 2025. Four of A.A. Murakami’s biggest robotics and nature-inspired installations are present, including Beyond the Horizon which was showcased at Milan Design Week 2025 as well as Under a Flowing Field (2023).
The latter features glass tubes filled with krypton gas, arranged as a field of lightning-like white lines above the visitors head, piercing through the color-tinted space in sequences. ‘This is a major moment for us because we started A.A. Murakami in 2020,’ says Alex Groves. ‘We’ve got many shows this year in different art museums. I think some people might know A.A. Murakami and not know Studio Swine, and vice versa. We’re grateful they’re reaching different audiences.’ And the viewers, perhaps unknown to them, are gifted a transient yet transcendental piece of A.A. Murakami’s profound connection with art, nature, and tech, articulated through a series of robotics installations.
The Cave at Museo della Permanente in Milan
