"At Studio Drift, we are looking to express in our work the miracles that already surround us in nature. People are so focused on their busy digital lives that they find very little time to look at the world as it actually is. So much of what mankind does is about mimicking nature or attempting to over-rule it. In our view, neither is possible. The works and installation we initiate at Studio Drift are designed to establish a point of balance between information overload and human sensibility. Our goal is to create a dialogue between nature and technology, a perfect combination of knowledge and intuition, science fiction and nature, fantasy and interactivity.
People often have very emotional responses to our work, but the fact is that most of what we put into our projects is already in the world around us. What we hope to do is encourage people to notice things that they no longer notice; to reach some kind of unconscious recognition that everyone instinctively feels and understands, yet have lost the time for. If people can understand what we aim to express even without an art background, then we are successful in our goals."
Both graduates from the Design Academy Eindhoven, Ralph Nauta and Lonneke Gordijn founded Studio Drift together with the vision of creating works that react to & question human behavior in 2006.
Studio Drift’s work includes the Flylight, Fragile Future 3 (FF3), Shylight, Dandelight and the Ghost collection. Their most widely known work FF3 is made with real dandelion seeds that are attached to the light by hand; seed by seed.
Since 2006 their work has been exhibited at leading museums and fairs worldwide, including the Victoria & Albert Museum London, Salone del Mobile Milan, World Expo Shanghai, Design/ Miami, Boijmans van Beuningen museum, Design Week Tokyo, Design Act Moscow, Museum of Arts & Design New York, The Israel Museum, PAD and La Biennale di Venezia.
Ralph and Lonneke love creating custom made installations; which they continue doing successfully for both private art collectors as well as for clients such as Louis Vuitton Asia and architects.
Studio Drift has been awarded several times for their designs, including ‘Light of the Future’ from the German Design Council in 2008 for Fragile Future. In 2010 Nauta and Gordijn's Fragile Future Concrete Chandelier won ‘The Moet Hennessy - Pavillion of Art and Design London Prize’ and was acquired by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. In 2011 Fragile Future 3.5 won the 1st prize at the ZomerExpo, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. In 2012, FF3 was awarded ‘Finest light sculpture of the Kortrijk fair’.
Drift’s Fragile Future series is developed in collaboration with the Carpenters Workshop Gallery in London and Paris. The Ghost collection is represented by Patrick Brillet Fine Art Gallery.
Nola
The project Nola is a collaboration between studio Drift and the new Dutch design label 'Buhtiq 31'.
Buhtiq 31 has its own glass booth during DDW at Strijp-S in front of the clock building.
Last saturday it was the launch of this new label and their collection.
Nola started as an experiment, playing with the endless possibilities combining colour and light in a spacial context. It became a landscape of light captured in glass bells. Through the combination of pastel coloured, natural glass and bright, complementary coloured LED’s we are able to establish a unique colour palette. By mixing and interconnecting multiple Bells, and placing them in overlapping compositions a complex spectacle of light emerges.
There are 4 different sizes of Bells with 4 different glass colours. The integrated LED-system in the base of the Bells enables us to mix the light colours within the entire spectrum and vary the light intensity from 20 up to 100%.
Flylight
The concept for Flylight was created around the question: ‘what is freedom?’ Societies are build around unwritten rules, people who are strictly bound by rules do not feel free, but people operating totally outside of society feel not accepted and lost. What is the best balance between the two for our wellbeing? We have translated this question by using the behaviour of birds as a symbol. Birds have the ability to cross boarders with no limits. They symbolize the freedom of mind, the sky is their limit. Some cultures see this as the messenger between earthly life and heaven.
At the same time, the group determines the rules the birds are bound by to survive. Again there is this tension between being free and being safe.
Flylight is an interactive light installation composed of on average 200 glass tubes. The glass tubes light up and respond to a viewer. Like schools of fish the birds fly as if they were a single entity, creating complex continually shifting patterns. The behavior is an example of “self-organization” where not one bird leads the group. Rather each individual is reacting to the speed and direction of the few birds immediately surrounding it. Amazingly two birds never collide.??We converted this bird behaviour into a digital DNA and translated it into an understandable visualisation of light. The behavior of Flylight is not programmed to a repeated pattern. Time after time the birds have to choose their way within the borders of the installation. The lightflock can see its environment through sensors that translate this information into a computer simulation, which drives the electronics therefore the lights. The first idea for Flylight was created fot a commission in 2007. Flylight has been exhibited during Salone del Mobile 2011 in Milan, The Israel Museum, La Biennale di Venezia in 2012 and at a private event during Art Dubai in 2013. The Pavillion of Art & Design (PAD) commissioned a Flylight installation for the entrance of the Paris 2013 edition in collaboration with HSBC.
Blass 500
Blass 500 is a new light sculpture made for the Italian brand Ceccotti. The sculpture is made of 500 glass tubes in a Brass frame. Different landscape shapes can be made on order. This collaboration was the first time Cecotti developed a light. They asked Studio Drift for their experience in light sculptures.
More information > www.studiodrift.com
