The BMW i5 Flow Nostokana features the car's surface colour-changing technology developed by BMW in collaboration with E Ink. The art car was unveiled on 29 February at the Frieze art fair in Los Angeles.
The i5 Flow Nostokana pays homage to the BMW 525i (E34) based art car. Esther Mahlangu decorated that car in 1991, becoming the first woman and the first African artist to do so. The name of the modern BMW art car was chosen in honour of Mahlangu's first son.
The car's body is covered with 1,349 laser-cut film fragments that can be electronically animated. Like an e-book reader, each piece of E Ink film contains several million microcapsules. The structure and arrangement of the coloured particles they contain can be changed by applying an electrical voltage.
The animation is accompanied by sounds specially written by Renzo Vitale, Creative Director of Sound at BMW Group, for the BMW i5 Flow Nostokana. Vitale used fragments of Mahlangu's voice, as well as the sounds of the feather brushes she used to paint. These were combined with the sounds produced by the coloured pencils used in the BMW design studio and the acoustic signal that was played as feedback when using the BMW i5 touchscreen display. The intensity of the sounds increases as the animation progresses.
BMW i5 Flow Nostokana
The first BMW car with E Ink technology was unveiled in 2022, but at that time it could only change colour from black to white and back again. A year later, the BMW i Vision Dee concept showed that up to 32 colours could be displayed on the body of the car. The i5 Flow Nostokana, for its part, demonstrated the automaker's ability to create complex shapes and patterns with precision.
Source: BMW
