Bringing sculpture into the world of everyday objects, Xiaomi and Daniel Arsham have signed an agreement to jointly create a new product for international distribution. Xiaomi 12T Pro Daniel Arsham Edition smartphone. The resulting product, which can also be interpreted as a work of contemporary art, combines past, present and future.
The design concept follows the aesthetics of the "archaeology of the future" first envisioned by Daniel Arsham: the artist experiments with sculptural surfaces that evoke obsolescence and natural erosion in the appearance of a smartphone. The product embodies a future in which digitalisation creates electronic, immaterial equivalents of physical objects. The collaboration is therefore in line with Xiaomi's core principles of innovation, design and manufacturing, which are shaped by Arsham's vision of a fictional archaeology.
About Daniel Arsham
Daniel Arsham is a New York-based artist whose practice spans visual art, architecture, performance and film. Arsham's iconic works blend past, present and future, demonstrating the malleability and power of nostalgia, often through references to moments from the late 20th century. From modern artworks to eroded casts of contemporary human figures, his works are made from geological materials such as sand, selenite and volcanic materials. These materials allow for the appearance and aesthetics of erosion or archaeological, future monuments, as Arsham has named them.
Bridging the concepts of time and technology, the Xiaomi 12T Pro Daniel Arsham Edition is Xiaomi's first bridging concept of time and technology. The design explicitly follows Arsham's iconic style, with bronze crystals set in a green patina and bronze accents on the back seemingly eroded over time. To extend this image from hardware to software, a unique theme has been applied across the entire device, incorporating both the bronze patina and the eroded motif. This unique eroded live background image senses the movement of the device through a gyroscope and shifts slightly to reveal new perspectives with an almost "trompe l'oeil" effect. The outer wrapping is similarly housed in a compartment decorated with bronze motifs, turning the wrapping into a personalised piece.
"Everything in life worth waiting for takes time. Time to grow, time to live, time to age and time to become timeless. In time, past, present and future become one. This is the essence of our existence. It is what makes life the beautiful, wonderful, unexpected adventure that it is. We just have to give it time."
