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There’s a little bit of magic in everything / and then some loss to even things out. —Lou Reed
SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST
To truly understand automakers’ perspectives on the future of vehicles, one must step outside the enthusiast zone and absorb their insights at events like SXSW, the bustling intersection of music and technology culture. The automotive future in these discussions is largely void of traditional driving; rather, it revolves around the concept of “mobility”, a term that remains somewhat ambiguous but one that could signal the eventual elimination of the steering wheel altogether. In line with this shift, gatherings such as the Mercedes me Convention serve to illuminate this transition. (Notably, “me” is intentionally lowercase—perhaps aiming to evoke a sense of individualism over self-importance.)
According to Dr. Jens Theimer, VP of global marketing communications at Mercedes, the vision is clear: “The me Convention aims to shift Mercedes from being a hardware manufacturer to a provider of mobility.” He made this statement to an audience of around 40 at the company’s SXSW media center in Austin, Texas. Essentially, the me Convention blends festival and conference elements that Mercedes takes to the right audiences to discuss “topics of the future,” as Theimer describes it.
The idea of transitioning to a “mobility” company may be jarring for driving enthusiasts—those at AMG would undoubtedly be shocked—but it is perfectly aligned with the spirit of SXSW, which, after a brief period as a launching pad for innovative apps over a decade ago, has expanded to embrace television, film, music, comedy, and gaming. The event features discussions such as “AI: Transforming Luxury, Fashion, and Beauty,” “VR’s Impact on the Sports Industry,” and “Creating the Most Popular Podcasts Ever.” It serves as a Spring Break for tech and cultural entrepreneurs, where a determined broker, enthusiastic fan, and junior digital marketer might find themselves racing to score last-minute tickets to a pop-up comedy show via the sleek SXSW app.
In 2018, Mercedes-Benz celebrated its second year participating officially in SXSW. The company not only sponsored Palm Park, a satellite gathering place a short walk from the convention center, but also engaged in discussions featuring executives such as Britta Seeger and Wilko Stark, while introducing the “Mercedes-Benz@SXSW Connect and Inspire Cube.” They also offered rides in a zero-emissions Smart microcar that circled downtown Austin inside a massive inflatable hamster ball. When I inquired about the purpose of this spectacle, the driver explained, “It’s because, in a zero-emissions vehicle, you won’t asphyxiate.” I pointed out that over time, we would eventually suffocate within the sealed plastic, just at a slower rate with an electric car compared to a gas-powered one. He merely shrugged and said, “Yeah, I guess,” before inching the ball forward in awkward motions. Eventually, “Still Dying Inside the Hamsterball, Just More Slowly” could serve as a fitting tagline if Smart were to embrace a bleak worldview, akin to Arby’s.
Much of the discussion surrounding vehicles at SXSW gravitated toward autonomy. The way automakers portray the future of self-driving vehicles often jolts my inner cynic, despite my growing acceptance of the technology itself. When Dr. Theimer spoke about autonomous passengers “behaving as they do on planes—they’ll read, sleep, eat, work, and watch movies,” I couldn’t help but note that planes have pilots—plural—who are urged to avoid those activities, which made me ponder the blind faith required to let go of the steering wheel for a nap. One could face whiplash the moment they wake up.
However, it is increasingly challenging to maintain a consistent stance on self-driving vehicles. For instance, commercial airliners employ pilots because transporting individuals is a service that warrants human oversight as a safeguard against liability, and future autonomous buses will likely follow suit. Yet private cars owned by individuals might not have that level of redundancy. Moreover, there seems to be a fundamental, human form of bias that leads us to prefer a New York City cab driver—an unpredictable selection from a pool of illogical, sometimes dangerous human beings—over a self-driving vehicle. Each ride in a cab is a gamble, the stakes being our safety with an unknown driver, a decision made casually by millions each day. Ultimately, we are all born to be passengers.
Humans tend to become surprisingly passive when confronted with overwhelming technological convenience, akin to a dog reveling in a belly rub. This extends to various scenarios, from incurring ATM fees to access our own funds to permitting a voice-activated home assistant to eavesdrop on our conversations. This trend implies that the debate surrounding self-driving vehicles isn’t about whether they will materialize—it’s about who profits and how. This explains the conspicuous Tidal signage at Palm Park, showcasing the streaming service now accessible in new Mercedes-Benz models. The partnership, unveiled at last year’s inaugural me Convention in Frankfurt, included a concert by Iggy Azalea, with the event’s press release bluntly stating:
Mercedes-Benz and global music and entertainment platform, TIDAL, have announced a long-term partnership – in the next few months, Mercedes-Benz customers that have connected their car to the Mercedes me Portal will be able to access a complimentary TIDAL HiFi membership. Customers will be able to stream more than 50 million songs, over 185,000 music videos, and hundreds of curated playlists, free of charge for twelve months in their vehicles, on their smartphones, or on their home music systems.
Mercedes-Benz
As steering wheels and pedals become relics of the past, automobiles—and the brands that produce them—will likely be distinguished by offerings like streaming services, gaming capabilities, or productivity applications. By correlating the vehicle’s real-time GPS data with users’ interactions, an endless flow of valuable data emerges, laying the groundwork for future profitability. It’s crucial to recognize that while Mercedes-Benz may sponsor discussions on innovative ideas at Palm Park, they’re equally present at SXSW to learn how to analyze customer engagements akin to Big Tech firms—emphasizing profitability.
“The future will be funded by surveillance capitalism,” lamented a disheveled British speaker on the stage at a session titled How to Fix the Future, which I randomly stumbled into on my final day at SXSW. “We feel stripped of power, we humans,” he continued. “We’ve been promised digital utopias, just as socialism and Maoism once wooed us.”
My SXSW app pinged, alerting me that Tesla CEO Elon Musk was set for a surprise discussion. I rushed to secure tickets, only to be met with swift notification that they were sold out—a tragically efficient three-act performance delivered seamlessly via push notification.
“A loss of agency,” echoed the speaker from the stage. “This is humanity’s ongoing crisis.”
ART BASEL
Amidst the unending party atmosphere, a vast convention center sprawls across a million square feet hosting countless paintings, photographs, sculptures, videos, and installations that challenge easy classification; this is the official artistic showcase of Art Basel Miami. Much of the artwork is recognizable, whether by artist or gallery, drawing in a constellation of billionaires who arrive on private jets, eager to snatch up their desired pieces before the show officially commences.
However, the entire city of Miami is infused with art during Basel. It’s nearly impossible to avoid pop-up exhibitions, discover installations hidden in cafes or parties, or spot Damien Hirst’s striking gilded mammoth sculpture “Gone But Not Forgotten” perched outside the Hotel Faena from a distance. The abundance of art can lead an unfocused visitor to become desensitized to everything, blurring the boundaries between art and ordinary surroundings. It’s a near-perfect Duchampian commentary on modern art, fueled by party vibes and an EDM soundtrack.
I had the fortune of having two seasoned arts and culture reporters as unofficial tour guides: a young, affable Belgian expatriate living in Mexico City and a strikingly fabulous fashion writer from Manhattan. Unbeknownst to them both, they—like me—didn’t possess a driver’s license, although we were all guests of Lexus during its second year hosting the Art Basel Miami program. The arts community doesn’t prioritize speed or power on the track.
Lexus’s involvement in Art Basel is sincere—an authentic passion project between two friends in the company’s communications team—and refreshingly understated. They avoided brash corporate branding, unlike Audi’s clunky placement at the adjacent DesignMiami venue. Instead, Lexus’s presence as part of the Art Series included several Art & Innovation discussions in collaboration with Whitewall magazine, covering subjects like “Art as Activism: The Role of the Feminist Artist,” “Supporting Artists in 2018: Alternatives to Patronage,” “From Idea to Mass Production: The Journey of Artists and Designers,” and “New Cultural Hubs: How Art Transforms Neighborhoods.”
Kevin Hunter, president of Toyota’s Calty Design Research, participated in the last two sessions, discussing, both practically and philosophically, how international automotive corporations ought to engage with art, technology, and corporate social responsibility. Hunter is tall and fit, exuding a genial Midwestern warmth complemented by a sunny Southern California tan. Originally hailing from Detroit, he earned his BFA in transport design from the College for Creative Studies before joining Calty Design Research in Newport Beach, California, in 1982. (Calty has since expanded its operations to San Francisco and Ann Arbor, Michigan.) Hunter initially trained as a fine artist and speaks genuinely about “inspiration” without the empty clichés often adopted by executives after extensive media training.
“If we truly want to create something unique and cutting-edge, we likely won’t find that inspiration in the automotive industry,” he observed.
At Art Basel Miami 2017, the “cutting-edge” label was ascribed to artists Lonneke Gordjin and Ralph Nauta, also known as Studio Drift, who shared the stage with Hunter during the “Idea to Mass Production” presentation. They were poised to launch a swarm of hundreds of autonomous drones, designed to mimic the fluid flight behavior of a flock of starlings, as a moving piece titled Franchise Freedom. This ambitious project took a decade to conceive and develop, and was set to unfold over South Beach’s skyline the following night.
Coming from the relatively tranquil scene of New York City, Miami’s nightlife during Art Basel is a wild experience. Events often begin at midnight, set to a pulsating house beat, with stylized attendees parading on the sidewalks, decked out in impressive outfits that clearly took hours to arrange, yet feature minimal actual clothing. With elective surgeries perfected to the extent that age becomes nearly impossible to discern, except for obvious indicators such as canes or pants, the atmosphere is manic. Nightclubs blast music so intensely that it becomes a wall of sound, while seemingly endless lines form outside venues, looping through downtown as partygoers eagerly anticipate entry to yet another gathering.
This chaos is punctuated by 300 glowing drones that ascended from the beach, coalescing into a silent, flowing entity that twisted gracefully through the sky before disbanding, each drone gradually descending back to their docking point.
While Rome is famed for the striking murmurations of starlings that move in flowing formations across the skyline, Franchise Freedom lacked that kind of speed or intricacy, yet there was something vital about its presence. It served as a rough representation of a wild animal behavior that is still largely beyond our understanding: until the early 20th century, scientists even attributed flocking patterns to a “group soul.”
The implications for autonomous driving technology are evident—imagine a moose unexpectedly appearing on an 85-mph highway, with self-driving cars responding in synchrony like a school of fish evading a predator. Interestingly, Franchise Freedom was co-developed in partnership with BMW, demonstrating that it could easily fit into an exhibition at SXSW or the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. However, I was witnessing it from the balcony of a luxury hotel in South Beach, standing in close proximity to Paris Hilton. The performance—a fusion of art and technology—strives to articulate an intrinsic animal urge that remains largely enigmatic to us, reminiscent of magic.
The ongoing struggle for humanity to reclaim agency is potentially our greatest challenge because we devote so much of our efforts to understanding it.
BIG TECH’S DEATHLESS FUTURE IS A LAUGHABLE SHAM
Art encapsulates a truth that technology cannot grasp: failure and death are inherent aspects of existence that cannot be eliminated in subsequent designs.
Conversely, Big Tech presents a compelling yet misleading narrative: that through technological advancements, a flawless world is attainable—a proposition that translates into a commercial reality of continuous technological acquisition. It’s a morally ambiguous promise akin to that of miracle pills or the allure of exercise without the effort itself, and many buy into it with the same unwavering faith that transformed similar schemes into billion-dollar enterprises. The notion of obtaining something for nothing seems innately appealing, especially for a species that has developed a “sucker gene” for such promises.
Unexpectedly, automakers find themselves aligned with the tenets of art in this discourse. Traditional car manufacturers remain acutely aware of the human toll involved: fatalities have been an unintended consequence since the advent of automobiles, which builds a certain degree of trust in automakers over Big Tech companies. The industry’s natural prudence works in favor of consumers. In contrast to the Technology-Utopian complex, even the largest car manufacturers operate from a fundamentally humanistic standpoint. Rather than digging enormous tunnels under cities without clear purpose or unveiling fanciful ideas of a tech-driven utopia, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, and others are present at SXSW, Art Basel, race circuits, dealer conferences, auto shows, Fashion Weeks, and at culinary events, actively engaging with the vibrant, unpredictable nature of humanity.
Gathering human insights in the real world is often expensive, inefficient, and challenging to convert into tangible profit. Yet it keeps dialogues rooted in reality, and the truth regarding our autonomous future is simple: it will always resemble an enhanced, more convenient, or streamlined version of the present. Reactions will vary, with some individuals excited while others may critique its inadequacies, though most will barely notice. Private enterprise will dispute every aspect of funding with government officials. Systems will continue to age and fail at inconvenient and perilous moments, just as they do now. While people may indeed nap, work, and watch films in their self-driving cars, issues will arise, and tragically, lives will be lost—just as they always have. Both tech and automotive companies ought to openly acknowledge these realities, regardless of potential impacts on their stock values. This resurgence of tech reverence, suggesting that Silicon Valley’s aimed goals are far more altruistic than corporate profits, is unsettling and ought to be re-evaluated.
People will die
from self-driving cars just as people perish from peanuts, bagel slicers, poorly labeled medications, cancer, war, plastic dry-cleaning bags, or even animal attacks. There is indeed no shortage of ways to meet fatal outcomes; technology serves as both a facilitator and a detriment, and should anyone imply differently, keep a firm grasp on your wallet.
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