Wallpaper 5

PHOTOGRAPHY: GILLEAM TRAPENBERG WRITER: YOKO CHOY

Last December, Studio Drift unleashed

Franchise Freedom, a formation of 300 drones

itted with a light source that went lying

and locking, as birds would, into the dark

Miami night. Using computer algorithms, the

studio added starling light patterns to the

drones’ software to emulate a phenomenon

previously only seen, on this scale at least,

in the natural world.

The Amsterdam-based studio, founded

in 2007 by Netherlands-born artist Lonneke

Gordijn and her British/Dutch partner

Ralph Nauta, aimed to address the balance

between the individual and the group, and

how animals trade their individual needs for

the safety of numbers. It was also a thrilling

spectacle and perhaps a deining moment

in ‘tech art’, the creative push and pull of

technology into new shapes and forms.

The work of the interdisciplinary studio

employs a special position in the tech art

movement. Using sculpture, installation

and performance, Gordijn and Nauta, who

are both graduates of the Design Academy

Eindhoven, take on the delicate, often

destructive, relationships between

human evolution, natural forces and

technological advancement.

Gordijn rose to international attention

with her irst light sculpture, Fragile Future,

in 2005. Nauta later joined her in developing

the project, which features delicate dandelion

seed heads attached to LEDs, powered

by bronze electrical circuits. ‘We were still

inding out what our interests were,’ Nauta

says. ‘I am very much interested in science

iction and Lonneke in natural processes.

This project became the basis of Studio Drift.’

In 2007 and 2008, further versions

of Fragile Future were shown at Salone del

Mobile in Milan, where it caught the eye

of the talent-hungry media and earned the

pair a place in a show during 2008’s Design

Miami. There they met Loïc Le Gaillard and

Julien Lombrail, founders of contemporary

design dealer Carpenters Workshop »

Future

shock

Drones lock, concrete

hovers and lamps bloom

as Studio Drift reimagines

science and nature

RALPH NAUTA AND
LONNEKE GORDIJN IN
THEIR AMSTERDAM
STUDIO, IN FRONT OF
THEIR 2017 WORK
DRIFTER, A ‘CONCRETE’
BLOCK DESIGNED TO
HOVER MID-AIR

∑ 099

Design