DRIFT’s Performative Installations that Connect to Nature
Kinetic patterns among birds, clouds, waves, and animals are some of the drivers that have inspired DRIFT’s installations ever since they started. DRIFT is a unique art and design studio founded by two Dutch artists, Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta in 2007. Over the years, DRIFT has established itself by emulating nature’s underlying mechanisms with advanced technology. As DRIFT’s motto states: “DRIFT manifests the phenomena and hidden properties of nature with the use of technology in order to learn from the Earth’s underlying mechanisms and to re-establish our connection to it.”
Through DRIFT’s projects, such as flocking of birds (Flylight), opening and closing flowers in response to their environment (Shylight), patterns of waves (Amplitude), etc. DRIFT has exquisitely transformed space and connected its audience with man-made nature by evoking people’s appreciation and awareness of this mysterious mechanism. At the same time, they ask deeper questions such as the delicate balance between individual versus group behaviors, humanity versus nature, etc.
Over the years, DRIFT has also devoted itself to illuminating the sky with its drone fleet. Using “real-life, life-size renders to visualize the improbable”, they have created marvelous aerial sculptures, installations, and performances. Currently, their Re-building Buildings project calls all architects to envision the future of their work and realize their designs in a sustainable yet mesmerizing way. DRIFT once again uses its technology to help people visualize their hopes and dreams.
We are thrilled to be able to reach DRIFT and conduct the following interview. From this interview, we are glad to present to you the various projects DRIFT has initiated and partaken in over the years.
Q: DRIFT is such a unique design outfit. First, please tell us about the backgrounds of the founders, Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta.
A: As a child, Lonneke already felt strongly connected to nature, as it was the intangible processes of nature that caught her attention. Whereas Ralph was interested in science fiction and amazed by the complexity of our inventions. Lonneke and Ralph met each other at the Design Academy, where they were both studying. Ralph and Lonneke started as individual artists after graduation, but within a year they shared a studio and started working together. In 2006, Studio Drift was born (as it was called at that time).
Q: What is the design philosophy of DRIFT?
A: “Everything can be simulated in animation and virtual reality, but we think there is an importance in creating real experiences that you can feel and see with your own eyes in the real world, not through a screen. We create artworks and experiences that you would think could not be possible, but they are real-life experiences” says Lonneke Gordijn.
Q: Please share with us DRIFT’s recent installation at the theater of New York City Ballet; its theme and design.
A: The New York City Ballet presents its tenth annual Art Series where they invite a contemporary artist to create a site-specific work that will be displayed during their winter season. This year it was DRIFT that installed their signature work Shylight in the New York City Ballet theater with custom choreography supervised by the artists themselves. Shylight, a performative sculpture, unites the movement of industrial motors with silk chalice-like structures into a natural choreography, with the goal of finding live emotion and personality in dead material. The inspiration for the work Shylight is the natural mechanism that controls the ability of flowers to open and close in response to their environment.
Q: What areas of nature inspire DRIFT the most? Please share with us some of its previous projects such as Flylight, as an example.
A: Birds swarming, the proliferation of plants, a movement of a mass of clouds, how we encounter the world around us.
DRIFT’s work Flylight is a site-specific light installation that directly interacts with its surroundings. The light mimics the behavior of a flock of birds in flight. This natural phenomenon formed a source of inspiration for Flylight, for which the flocking behavior was translated into agent-based software that was specially developed for this work. This means that the pattern, in which the installation lights up, is not pre-programmed but has an interactive compound: just like a real flock of birds. The work questions the delicate balance between the group and the individual. Just like birds, people find safety in a group, while at the same time, they are forced to act according to a set of rules on which society functions. Those who choose complete individual freedom above these rules are forced to operate outside of society. Where lies the perfect balance between the two?
DRIFT’s Fragile Future is a multidisciplinary light sculpture, which fuses nature and technology. The sculpture contains real dandelion seeds that were picked by hand and connected seed by seed to an LED light. This labor-intensive process is a clear statement against mass production and throwaway culture. Fragile Future is a modular work that can overgrow a space. It consists of three-dimensional bronze electrical circuits connected to light-emitting dandelions. The project is a critical, yet utopian, vision of the future of our planet, where two seemingly opposite evolutions have made a pact to survive together. Are the rapid technological developments of our age really more advanced than the evolution of nature, of which the dandelion is such a transient and symbolic example? And could those two evolve together and meet in the future?
DRIFT’s Meadow installation is a kinetic sculpture of mechanical flowers. Most man-made objects have a static form, while everything natural in this world, including people, is subject to constant metamorphosis and adaptation to their surroundings. Meadow is the result of the question of how an inanimate object can mimic those changes that express character and emotions. As an upside-down landscape, the kinetic sculpture reacts to the visitors as if they were the sun to a blooming flower. All flowers together create the experience of a botanical creature that naturally engages the viewer. The robotic flowers blossom by mixing the light colour and the colour of the fabric which in itself has a colour gradient.
Q: While emulating nature with technology, what are the most challenging parts that DRIFT has faced and how has it overcome them?
A: “We are big dreamers. Sometimes our ideas are far ahead and we have to stretch technical solutions, making the improbable possible, and this takes a long time”, says Lonneke Gordijn.
Q: What is Amplitude? Please tell us the story of this installation.
A: The movement in this installation is like the pulses create a similar motion to that of waves, and is widely recognized in all living nature. Each element is triggered by a weight that slides back and forth in the tube. The moving glass breaks the natural light in space and reflects it as moving rays; creating a visual dynamism. In contrast to many of our other works, Amplitude does not incorporate a light source but involves the reflection of external light sources on the installation.
Q: We are intrigued by your Re-building Buildings project; please tell us more about it.
A: What would the Sagrada Familia look like if it was finished? Imagine a full circle Colosseum… DRIFT has been working to improve its drone software to create real-life, life-size renders to visualize the improbable.
DRIFT works together with a multidisciplinary team of 64 on aerial sculptures, installations, and performances. All individual artworks have the ability to transform spaces. The confined parameters of a museum or a gallery do not always do justice to a body of work, rather it often comes to its potential in the public sphere or through architecture.
In 2017 DRIFT made its first performative art installation named Franchise Freedom. This drone show premiered at Art Basel Miami in 2017, followed by performances all over the world. Besides this performative art installation, DRIFT produced many more, with which the world is well known.
In collaboration with the company Drone Stories and Nova Skystories, DRIFT has used its drone technology since 2020 to reimagine the future of architecture. It is the aim to assist architects to bring their future projects to reality in a mesmerizing yet sustainable way, visualizing what this life-size would look like.
Q: If you don’t mind, please share with us DRIFT’s current projects.
A: We are currently working on projects for which we can’t share information with you yet. We will announce everything on our website in the near future.