How DRIFT Lit Up the Skies for Frontline Workers
On May 5, 2020, the artist collective DRIFT lit up the skies of Rotterdam. With the Netherlands in the midst of the coronavirus lockdown, and celebrating its annual Liberation Day largely behind closed doors, the artists flew 300 illuminated drones over the Erasmus University Medical Center. Designed to mimic the murmurations of starlings, the drones appeared in the night sky as a celestial swarm of lights, swooping and undulating, in a moving tribute to workers on the frontlines of the pandemic. The drone performance was the latest iteration of DRIFT’s work Franchise Freedom, which is the product of more than a decade of research into avian flocking behavior. That research has been translated into algorithms that power the movement of the drones.
DRIFT. Franchise Freedom, 2017. Performed at Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami, FL, US, December 2017. Photo: James Harris. Courtesy of DRIFT
"We were really questioning, as artists: what is most important to us? Our work is to share experiences with audiences and create situations where you tune the whole audience into one vibration, one frequency where everyone starts to feel connected."
The collective — founded and led by Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta since 2007 — is known for these kinds of ambitious, technologically groundbreaking investigations into natural phenomena. Their work, often intended to bring people together through shared experiences and installations, has included a giant, reality-defying concrete block that floats in the air, a web of light composed partly of dandelion seeds, and a vast, ghostly structure woven from 16 kilometers of Japanese fluorocarbon strands. We checked in with Gordijn, in Amsterdam, as she was reflecting on the collective’s recent performance.
You recently flew your flock of drones over the Erasmus medical center in Rotterdam. How did that come together?
It was about six weeks after the whole country was closed down because of the coronavirus. We were really questioning, as artists: what is most important to us? Our work is to share experiences with audiences and create situations where you tune the whole audience into one vibration, one frequency where everyone starts to feel connected. This is a time where the most important things you have in your life are the connections. All the other things, I think we have noticed we can lose for a while, or maybe even forever. We thought: what can we do to unite people in an outdoor situation? Franchise Freedom is a work about freedom. It questions freedom. And of course in that period we were very limited in our freedom. Our freedom is also our health. It was so fitting, the concept of the work, that we thought — let’s try to make this happen.
DRIFT. Franchise Freedom, 2017. Special edition of Franchise Freedom in Rotterdam during COVID 19 pandemic as a sign of hope for the collective freedom, May 2020. Photo: Ossip van Duivenbode. Courtesy of DRIFT
"Technology almost always comes straight from nature, only nature is more complex, a way of growing and transforming."
It must have been challenging to put together a public event during a lockdown.
We had to go to the mayor of Rotterdam and so many people to get this done, because events were forbidden. So this could not be an event — nobody could know about it in advance, because if people gathered together to wait for the performance to happen, then it would be canceled. We had a lot of stress but we also recognized that everyone had already been home for six weeks, everyone was dying to get together and make something happen. And because everyone was available, we pulled it off in two weeks. I was worried that it would leak, and people would gather, and then it would be canceled. But we worked day and night to do it, and we love to do that.
The performance used drones, an artificial technology, to create an image that suggests the fragility, and also the strength, of the human body. Why are you interested in this conversation between technology and nature?
We are facing a lot of issues at this moment in history, and I think a lot of people feel quite disconnected. I think it is because we communicate mainly over social media or phone or video. We are staring into screens all day long and it means that you’re only in your brain all day long. You’re not physically connected. And then you’re in so many conversations online — I think it distracts us very much from our feelings. Our feelings tell us, very often, what to do. I’m not talking about emotions, I’m talking about how we physically feel in our bodies. We are not made to only function in our brains, otherwise we would be one big head that doesn’t move! We are bodies that are made to move, to be one with someone else, to be in groups. We create performances, sculptures, and installations that almost always contain movement. Specific movements that we recognize from nature have a very calming effect on us and bring us very close to — I would almost say — home. To who we really are and where we really belong. We use technology to try to recreate what is happening in nature. The wind, the waves.
It sounds like you are driven by a desire to create shared experiences, rather than by the technologies that you adapt and create.
Our work is really not about technology. We only use it to create experiences that we can relate to. To bring life into objects. So, for instance, one of our works, Drifter, is a massive concrete block that floats. The concrete block is something like 7 x 7 x 14 feet. The moment you put a block on the floor, it’s a block of concrete and it’s dead to us. The moment it starts to lift off and float in the air, we start to feel a relationship with the block. I start to feel some friendship, maybe even love, for that block. It’s totally strange but it has to do with our bodies and minds recognizing something that is moving as life. Very often we don’t feel that connection with the world around us. It’s very dead and functional and made to be super efficient. But not, per se, to make us feel really great. I think that is what we need more of in our lives. To feel energized. We use technology to get there. I think technology has always been an extension for humans, to create situations that are beneficial for us. But the reality is that they are not always. Sometimes technology is created just because it’s possible, and then we adapt to it. But originally it’s always a matter that helps. Technology almost always comes straight from nature, only nature is more complex, a way of growing and transforming. With technology we can only reproduce to a certain extent. I always find nature endlessly more interesting. But through technology, I learn how wonderful nature is.
DRIFT. Drifter, 2017. Concrete, robotics and a tracking system. 4 x 2 x 2 meters. Opening of Coded Nature, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2018. Photo: Raymond van Mil. Courtesy of DRIFT
You’ve studied the patterns of bird flight extensively to create avian-like choreography with your drones. Are there other phenomena in nature that inspire you?
Many. There are a few that we’ve looked into in depth. One of them is how a dandelion grows and transforms and multiplies. After it opens, it closes and becomes a bowl of parachutes. For one of our works, I’ve been picking thousands of dandelions every year for more than 15 years. This taught me so much about how this plant thinks — which sounds ridiculous because, of course, it doesn’t have a central brain. But I have seen the first flower of that plant, the first seed bowl, the way it starts to grow and only when the temperature and circumstances and humidity are right, it opens up. And the moment it opens up, all the other ones come out. I saw so much cleverness. I tried to grow them myself, but they just won’t grow where there’s no wind. Wind is their main way to reproduce and spread their seeds. So if there’s no wind, they don’t grow. I found that amazing. There is so much tactility. Somehow this plant feels the environment and is aware of the environment, in a completely different way than how humans and animals think. I could talk for three hours about dandelions.
