BMW has announced a new collaboration with cutting-edge art app Acute Art that brings the world-famous BMW Art Car collection into the digital realm for the first time ever. To celebrate over 50 years of BMW Group cultural engagement, the BMW Art Cars will be shown in augmented reality (AR) through Acute Art, marking the first time that the rolling works of art are available digitally for everyone to enjoy no matter where they are in the world. The first 10 BMW Art Cars digitally launched in Acute Art on July 21, 2021, with the subsequent nine vehicles debuting every two weeks until all 19 BMW Art Cars are available in the app.
Initiated by French race car driver and art aficionado Hervé Poulain and conceived in collaboration with the founder of BMW Motorsport Jochen Neerpasch, the first BMW Art Car was commissioned when both asked Alexander Calder to design Poulain’s BMW 3.0 CSL race car in 1975, which he would later race at Le Mans. Since then, 18 more world renowned artists have gone on to express their own artistic vision using some of BMW’s most iconic models as their canvas.
Utilizing Acute Art’s unique VR/AR/mixed reality technology, the digitally reproduced Art Cars can be virtually staged anywhere a user desires in this wholly immersive 360° AR exhibition. To achieve an exact digital reproduction, the real Art Cars were carefully scanned from all angles using a photogrammetry methodology, capturing every detail of the artists’ expression on each car’s surface.
The first wave of BMW Art Cars that can be experienced via the app are: Alexander Calder (BMW 3.0 CSL, 1975, pictured top), Michael Jagamara Nelson (BMW M3, 1989), Ken Done (BMW M3, 1989), Matazo Kayama (BMW 535i, 1990), Esther Mahlangu (BMW 525i, 1991), Jeff Koons (BMW M3 GT2, 2010) and John Baldessari (BMW M6 GTLM, 2016). From then on, further BMW Art Cars will be integrated in the Acute Art App every two weeks. To fully discover and experience the interactive BMW Art Cars, the Acute Art app is available free of charge on the App Store and Google Play.
