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(left to right) Cats. 108–109 Iris van Herpen, Dress and Diatom Gown; Cat. 14 DRIFT, Meadow

DRIFT

Artist DRIFT
Bio Established 2007, Amsterdam
Title Meadow
Year 2017
Medium Site-specific kinetic sculpture with aluminum, stainless steel, printed fabric, LEDs, and robotics
Dimensions Dimensions variable
Credit Represented by Pace Gallery. © 2024 DRIFT. Photograph by James Florio, courtesy of the Denver Art Museum.
Label Cat. 14

In the spring and summer, vibrant fields of wildflowers erupt across the Rocky Mountains. Although the high altitude and volatile weather limit the variety of flowers that can grow, each meadow is still unique, responding to its environment and surrounding life with true site specificity. This is also the case with Amsterdam-based studio DRIFT’s Meadow, a kinetic sculpture of massive fabric flowers suspended on armatures that open and close hypnotically. These base components are never the same twice: the flowers’ colors, arrangement, and motion are influenced by locality just as much as their natural counterparts.

Color photograph of wildflowers in the Colorado mountains. In the foreground, the mountain slopes downward from left to right. Hundreds of colorful flowers in orange, purple, red, and yellow, all with green leaves, cover the mountainside. Pine trees and mountain peaks in the background.
Fig. 1 Wildflowers in the Gore Range, Colorado. iStock.com/Adventure_Photo.

For the Denver Art Museum’s installation, the sweeping colors were inspired by flora native to Colorado, including the iconic columbine (fig. 1). The bright blues, yellows, and oranges of alpine wildflowers are meticulously color matched and printed on fabric, as well as translated to a digital gradient of light that emanates from within each flower as it opens. This “choreography,” as DRIFT calls it, is inspired not just by the surrounding natural landscape but also by Meadow’s location within the built environment.1 Between the sharp, angular walls of the museum’s Frederick C. Hamilton Building, the cluster of oversized flowers widens and intensifies as the space opens, as a mass of mountain blooms might grow between two rocky outcroppings.

Using custom robotics and complex software, the flowers in Meadow replicate the motion of nyctinastic plants, which close their petals at night and open in the morning in response to the light and temperature of the sun. As the colossal flowers open above visitors’ upturned faces, viewers fulfill the sun’s role, becoming the sustaining force of life for this ecosystem. Just as Meadow flourishes between technological and natural processes, experiencing its meditative rhythm places us at the convergence of many different scales and spaces, encouraging reflection on our roles in the world.

Kit Bernal

  1. “Meadow,” Studio Drift, accessed September 7, 2023, https://studiodrift.com/work/meadow/. ↩︎

(left to right) Cats. 108–109 Iris van Herpen, Dress and Diatom Gown; Cat. 14 DRIFT, Meadow
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Color photograph of wildflowers in the Colorado mountains. In the foreground, the mountain slopes downward from left to right. Hundreds of colorful flowers in orange, purple, red, and yellow, all with green leaves, cover the mountainside. Pine trees and mountain peaks in the background.
Fig. 1 Wildflowers in the Gore Range, Colorado. iStock.com/Adventure_Photo.
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