On the eve of art week in Paris and the Paris Motor Show last month, Mercedes-Benz opened “The Magical Garage.” The interactive installation showcased the automaker’s products that live at the intersection of sound, art, and technology at the Musée Rodin, the grand 100-year-old museum that embodies Auguste Rodin’s legacy. The artist donated his estate to France to be kept at the location, where today visitors can see important works ranging from Vincent Van Gogh’s Portrait of Père Tanguy to thousands of Rodin’s sculptures, including Balzac and The Kiss.
The museum, serving as a reminder that Rodin pushed boundaries in his time, was an apropos setting for Mercedes, the world’s oldest carmaker, to double down on the theme, as one executive framed it, “to develop desire.”
Courtesy of Mercedes-Benz.
Courtesy of Mercedes-Benz.
Mercedes melded art and cars to underscore its efforts, as well as introduce its newest electric vehicle, the Mercedes EQE SUV. A troupe of dancers clothed in pale yellow encircled the car at the unveiling. The EQE SUV hits dealerships next year and will be capable of 300 miles on a single electric charge. As it builds an all-electric portfolio, the next-level technology onboard car experience is part of the story. Luxury carmakers must think in creative ways about how to show off tech milestones in their vehicles—complex digitized interior spaces in pursuit of simple, elegant user experiences. At the Musée Rodin, sound experience was the centerpiece.
Apple, Dolby, and Universal Music Group executives joined Mercedes’s Chief Executive Officer to explain how the next-generation spatial system operates in collaboration with each brand. Concert halls, jazz clubs, a night club: this is how Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of Apple Music and Beats, described the Mercedes-Benz sound experience. “Mercedes-Benz is the first non-Apple device to offer spatial audio by Apple,” he said.
Courtesy of Mercedes-Benz.
Courtesy of Mercedes-Benz.
To demonstrate the capability of its new system, music producer Derek “MixedByAli” Ali —who launched his career producing for Kendrick Lamar—demonstrated the depth of the system, on which he added creative insight. In a constructed tent in the museum garden, he used his work on a recent Glass Monkey track to illustrate the cinematic range of spatial sound as the percussive beats resonated from every direction. The system uses multiple platforms centered around the Dolby Atmos experience and Apple Music.
A six-foot high, walk-in installation was staged above a fountain, where a car seat was set up for interactive driving-like experiences. Paintings from the Mercedes art collection were also on view in the garden, including works by Verena Loewensberg, François Morellet, Sylvie Fleury, and Ugo Rondinone for the temporary exhibition “Paintings, Concepts and a Bicycle – Insights into the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection.”
Courtesy of Mercedes-Benz.
Courtesy of Mercedes-Benz.
The installation culminated later in the week with Kid Cudi’s Entergalactic performance that featured the debut of his collection with KAWS. While traditional auto show conventions were once used to debut cars, automakers are rethinking how to incorporate creative elements from the arts in an effort to make a splash.
