Inside DRIFT’s moving worlds

A visitor crosses a field of moving blocks; elsewhere, a suspended constellation of glass lights up in response to a passing body. In Murmuring Minds and Aeolus, DRIFT makes participation part of the artwork’s behaviour, using natural systems to examine how individual movements affect a larger whole.

The two installations belong to different places and moments. Murmuring Minds appeared in the Living Landscape exhibition at LUMA Arles in 2024. Aeolus premieres with Carpenters at London’s Ladbroke Hall in October 2026. Seen together, they reveal two approaches to a recurring concern in DRIFT’s practice: giving perceptible form to forces and relationships that usually escape attention.

A swarm at ground level

In Murmuring Minds, sixty rectangular blocks move autonomously within a defined space. Participants enter this field and negotiate their position among the objects, whose collective arrangements change through the encounter. The audience watches a composition that is continually being made through human movement and computational behaviour.

DRIFT draws on the swarming patterns of birds, fish and bees. The blocks can behave collectively or individually, while different actions produce different responses. A movement may encourage synchronisation or introduce disorder. The installation makes the consequences of a choice visible across the surrounding group.

This encounter also places leadership and control in question. Participants have to judge when to advance, pause or adapt as the field changes around them. Observation becomes a practical negotiation with a system whose behaviour cannot be reduced to a single static arrangement.

At LUMA Arles, the work was shown alongside Coded Nature in Living Landscape, which ran from 1 June to 29 September 2024. The exhibition connected DRIFT’s investigation of movement and natural patterns with Vincent van Gogh’s approach to landscape. The supplied photographs document this presentation in Arles.

Airflow held in glass

For Aeolus, the starting point is the architecture of the room itself. DRIFT translates the surroundings into a digital environment and models the movement of wind through it. A selected moment in that flow determines the sculptural composition, giving each installation a form specific to its setting.

Suspended glass traces this otherwise invisible geometry. The material remains fixed while light travels through the sculpture in response to visitors’ movements. The work separates two kinds of motion: airflow recorded in its physical form, and illumination that continues to change as people encounter it.

The slender elements gather into sweeping curves that can be read as a continuous current from a distance. Closer views reveal individual lines, suspension wires and points of light. DRIFT lists borosilicate glass rods, stainless-steel nodes, custom LEDs and microcoax cables among the work’s components.

The artist statement frames wind as a force of exchange and renewal, carrying seeds, moisture and nutrients through environments. By making one trace of that movement visible, Aeolus directs attention to the activity within seemingly empty space. Its premiere at Ladbroke Hall runs from 13 to 25 October 2026.

The visitor within the system

Both works depend on a relationship between a programmed structure and a person moving through space. In Murmuring Minds, that relationship changes the arrangement of separate objects across the floor. In Aeolus, it animates light within a suspended form shaped by simulated airflow.

Their connection lies in the scale of the response: a local gesture becomes legible across a wider composition. DRIFT places the visitor inside that relationship, making the consequences of movement something to experience directly.

Project Credits

Artist: DRIFT / @studio.drift
Founders: Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta
Works: Murmuring Minds; Aeolus

Murmuring Minds
Presentation: Living Landscape, LUMA Arles, Arles, France
Exhibition dates: 1 June–29 September 2024
Photography: Finn Bech

Aeolus
Presentation: Carpenters at Ladbroke Hall, London, United Kingdom
Exhibition dates: 13–25 October 2026
Materials: Borosilicate glass rods, stainless-steel nodes, custom LEDs, microcoax cables
Photography: Benjamin Baccarani