The duo speak with Olivia Allen about cave art, the block universe theory, and how their “ephemeral tech” installations can make time feel different. All photography by Saffron Liberty.
For married artist duo A.A.Murakami, inspiration can be found in a Werner Herzog podcast, a Kubrick monolith, or the rhythm of bubbles surfacing in unison. Their kinetic installations — The Cave and Beyond the Horizon among them — use steel, scent, air, and water to create moments that linger between prehistoric and futuristic, engineered and elemental. Described by the duo as “ephemeral tech,” the pair create experiences built from complex systems yet designed to dissolve in real time.
Olivia Allen spoke with A.A.Murakami on the occasion of their participation in Opposites United Milano 2025. Their exhibition Floating World is on view at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston through 21st September 2025.
Olivia Allen: Through your use of technology, your work captures the fleeting beauty and awe we often associate with the natural world. Was there a particular natural phenomenon that first sparked The Cave?
A.A.Murakami: It was something I had heard: a podcast with Werner Herzog and Cormac McCarthy reflecting on cave art, and how it remained stylistically consistent for over thirty thousand years. It stayed with me. The Cave grew from that sense of deep time — tangible and present, like a memory etched outside of history, suspended in a space that feels both ancient and otherworldly.
The geometric symmetry and mechanical choreography of The Cave immediately call to mind the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Was that a conscious reference? And were there other cinematic or cultural touchpoints?
Yes, we’re often drawn to sci-fi as a conceptual space. The steel monolith at the centre of The Cave felt truer to the cave’s atmosphere than any attempt to depict natural rock. We were also thinking about the “block universe” theory, where past, present, and future all coexist in a four-dimensional space. The pool represents that surface: everything that has and will occur exists beneath, already programmed. What emerges through the surface, moment by moment, is what we experience as the present.
In Beyond the Horizon, the smoke-filled bubbles appear to breathe in and out, building from stillness to sudden synchrony. What was the intention behind this rhythm?
We wanted each bubble to feel like a singular event, quiet and intimate, then gradually build into emergent synchrony. It mimics natural systems where individual agents self-organise, becoming something greater through collective action. That moment of climax is about shared presence.
Could you tell me more about your joint practice? How do your individual perspectives converge?
Azusa is trained in architecture, and I studied fine art. We met while studying product design and began working together. Our collaboration is conversational; ideas evolve through exchange, leading to outcomes that neither of us would reach alone.
Your work often exists between extremes: the organic and artificial, permanent and ephemeral. How do The Cave and Beyond the Horizon expand on this idea of opposites united?
Energy comes from contrast. It’s what keeps planets in orbit, a pull toward mass and a push into the void. When we heard the theme ‘Opposites United’ and considered the venue, the idea of a cave — ancient, sacred, yet engineered with technology — emerged as a kind of contradiction made manifest.
What role does choreography play in your kinetic installations? Do you see your machines as performers?
Yes. We’ve never worked with human performers, but we’re fascinated by imbuing machines with a sense of life. That attempt, whether successful or failing, reveals something about the nature of existence and the existence of nature.
There’s a ritualistic quality to your installations, like stepping into another kind of time. Is that intentional?
Very much so. We’re drawn to spaces like Shinto shrines, which evoke spiritual stillness without doctrine. Stillness is only felt in contrast to movement, just as silence is shaped by the memory of sound. We think of the crane poised at the pond’s edge, motionless until it strikes, perfectly timed. It’s in that kind of poised quiet that we find meaning.
Your work relies on scent, air, and movement — materials that are often invisible. What draws you to the immaterial in a world obsessed with surface?
Watching water is watching behaviour, not form. Its surface tension comes from weak hydrogen bonds, fragile and ever-forming and dissolving — that quality is endlessly compelling. It exists in these unstable states: mist, scent, bubbles. Water is also meditative; through observing its motion, you can find stillness in the mind.
How has your relationship with technology evolved as it’s become more central to your work? How do you balance control with unpredictability?
We don’t see ourselves as conventionally technical. Our background is material and tactile. But technology lets us choreograph phenomena, natural or synthetic, with more nuance. We’re deeply aware of how digital life colonises our time and attention. Our work resists that. Though built with complex systems — code, computation, sensors — what you encounter is physical, fleeting, impermanent. We call it ephemeral tech. You experience it with your body, in the real world.
When you watch a screen, you’re aware, subconsciously, that you can pause, rewind, and replay it, and it will remain the same. It exists in another dimension that is outside the physical laws in which we exist; it’s not subject to entropy or death. When you experience nature, there is an awareness that it’s transient, that you yourself are a fleeting moment in the vast span of the universe, and you are sharing a moment that will never come again.
How do you invoke a sense of awe? What does that word mean to you?
Einstein said the most important feeling is the mysterious. The more deeply you question, the faster you reach the limits of explanation — the edge of knowing. That’s where awe lives, in the space between familiarity and the unknown. We want to bring people to that threshold and let them look out in silence.
Words by Olivia Allen
