Studio Drift: Poems in Material & Motion

The work of Studio Drift has evolved on a winding yet deliberate path, delightfully unrestrained by the traditions of either art or design. The aesthetic language the duo, Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta, have developed on this journey blends rawness with refinement, revealing the inner workings of phenomena while also inspiring wonderment about the unknowable, achieving a satisfying and modern mysticism. This language, realized in the materials, form, and motion of the objects and installations they create, often seems to aim at the same target as poetry: achieving emotional resonance.

A common interpretation of the works of Studio Drift, many of which are on display at the Stedelijk Museum in the exhibition Studio Drift: Coded Nature, is that the starting point of the projects is nature or a biological process. The projects are subsequently talked about as a type of lyrical biomimicry or even biodesign. But I think it is more precise to point to the human element, to observe that the origin or key inspiration of Studio Drift’s work are feelings, combined with fundamental questions about life. In the words of Gordijn and Nauta, their aspirations range from “making the struggles of humans visualized,” to “revealing the poetry of mechanics.”1

The art and design practices that emerge are a means to translate those feelings and fundamental questions into objects, performances, and installations. The ultimate goals of these works are not to make design more sustainable, or to uncover a hidden but brilliant engineering solution that evolution has developed. Instead, like most good art, the purpose of the work of the studio seems to be to make a lasting and unique aesthetic impression on the viewer, and to offer multiple layers of meaning to savor with the mind.

In fact, nature, as we observe its many dimensions, reveals devilish complexity and follows no code accessible to humans. Works of bioart such as the Mutatoes and The Cultivar Series by Uli Westphal help demonstrate this exquisitely. They are celebrations of mutation and polymorphism, two engines of evolution that deliver variety to ensure survival. For these works the artist collected hundreds of roots, fruits, and vegetables from markets around the world, then photographed them with drama and focus as if they were sculptures. The resulting images are aesthetically arranged with a degree of precision that mirrors the extent to which the subjects deviate so wildly from the “normal” tomato or lemon.

This approach is not as simple as making a clock-face transparent; indeed, the unfinished aesthetic in Fragile Future is offset by the delicate fragility of the dandelion’s tiny winged seeds. Such thoughtful juxtapositions characterize much of the work of the studio, offering proof of human skillfulness in an elegant way, using motion to depict intellectual and emotional tensions, or illuminating the hidden materiality of everyday objects. A potent example of this combination of techniques can be seen in Franchise Freedom.

The uncertainty and apparent improvisation of the motion of the drones is a visualization of the contention between the group and the individual. It would be a mistake to call this particular work biomimetic, for it is in fact quite human-centered; not in a selfish or narrow way, but in how it brings to life invisible, collective struggles, as described by Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta, through an artificial medium that resembles one from nature. It is the distillation of such ideas that makes the work remarkably resonant.

Just as poetry takes language, compresses it, and adds music, so Studio Drift does with Franchise Freedom: it distills the complex concept of freedom with respect to the group and the individual, and then adds to it, in the form of the flock’s movement, a kind of music. Often the goal of poetry is to achieve emotional resonance, and Gordijn and Nauta crafted the behavior of this flock towards the same purpose. In an iterative process that involved considerable resources, time, and insistence from the artists to get the behavior just right while working with engineers to program the drones, the goal was not to find a system of flying patterns that most closely resembled that of birds. Instead, they “relied completely on their emotional intuition.” They were only satisfied at the moment when the movement was moving to them, when it took on that unnamable yet unmistakable quality that allows you to connect with these entities, so that they seem alive or at least they seem like much more than the sum of their parts.

The work Drifters offers layers of meaning in a similar way. It is ostensibly about silent, floating blocks finding their way, of merging into a grid or system greater then themselves, finding a hive or building a swarm. They appear to be guided by an unseen but essential force like magnetism or a super-natural gravitation, like that depicted in the ultimate scene of the film 2010: The Year We Make Contact that gives birth to a star. The presentation prompts a viewer to wonder if such unification is natural, ideal, or perhaps even detrimental to each monolith, onto which viewers may project human qualities. And we are likewise led to ask: what is the logic or cosmic purpose that holds this system together? And is there an analog in the social world?

One possible answer was suggested by Studio Drift in conversation recently: specifically, Gordijn pointed to research by Yuval Noah Harari as reported in his recent book Sapiens: A Brief History of Human Kind (2014), that suggests organized human life, civilization as we know it, rests on our ability to share a fictional narrative. This can be thought of as our ability to believe in concepts that reside solely in the imagination, such as gods, nations, money, or human rights. Without such cognitive capacity people would form group populations of only about two hundred or so individuals; exceeding this number leads to a breakdown of cooperation and absence of shared goals and, eventually, violence, as observed in primates. In turn, groups splinter and form anew, with their group identity resting mainly on the bonds of extended family.

This considered speculation in the realms of evolutionary biology and neuroscience helps form meaningful connections between Drifters, and current political events. Specifically, this refers to the splintering of coalitions into ever smaller and more extreme pockets, the rise of tribalism and populism, and the loss of collective agreement about sources of truth. These are phenomena that characterize the critical and often worrying developments of our time, but they are rooted in the same tensions and trade-offs present during the ancient origins of civilization and the eternal conflict between the individual and the collective. As Lonneke Gordijn has rhetorically asked “Do we want real freedom?”

Today, the evolving concept of freedom alongside the simultaneous necessity for both reliable sources of fact and a set of collectively-shared symbolic delusions or fictional narratives, provides a rich terrain for artistic response. The film Drifters is one such response that wordlessly speaks across languages and cultures and can aid the viewer in sorting out their positions and feelings about such important issues. By savoring the immensity of these concepts and tensions that are as old as humanity, Studio Drift can be seen as a generator of a timeless, improvised poetry. The rhymes and verses of its creations are unbound from any code; they rather drift into and out of rhythms, like a work of jazz.