At Milan Design Week 2025, Dutch artist collective DRIFT returned after nearly two decades with a poetic and immersive installation titled Drift Us. Created in collaboration with Audi, the installation captivated visitors not just through its beauty, but by offering them an active role in its unfolding. In this work, motion wasn’t merely observed, it was embodied. The audience became an integral part of the experience, turning into the very force that animated the space: the wind.
DRIFT, founded by Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta, is renowned for kinetic installations that translate ephemeral elements from nature into sensory environments using cutting-edge technology. With Drift Us, they have once again succeeded in turning something intangible into a tangible, awe-inspiring spectacle. The installation comprised a field of filament-like light structures suspended in the air, each one swaying in soft, synchronized motion. As people walked through the space, sensors detected their presence, triggering waves of movement that mimicked the organic swaying of tall grasses or the rippling of wind across water. The effect was graceful, almost meditative, so natural that one could forget entirely that robotics lay at the heart of it.
Designer: Studio Drift
This symbiotic dance between human motion and machine response formed the emotional core of the installation. It underscored DRIFT and Audi’s shared belief that progress, true, transformative progress, emerges from motion, from adaptability, and from deep human connection. “DRIFT and Audi share the vision that innovation comes from moving people,” the artists explained. “In our highly complex and demanding world, flexibility and adaptability are key to being frontrunners in technological and at the same time human-centered innovation.”
The installation was housed within Audi’s House of Progress, a thematic pavilion exploring the future of sustainable mobility and design. Here, Drift Us served not only as a work of art but also as a metaphor for Audi’s brand philosophy. As visitors moved, they activated change. They didn’t just observe innovation; they became a part of it. In this way, the piece gently invited viewers to consider their own role in shaping the future, not just through grand gestures, but through small, seemingly invisible movements.
DRIFT’s return to Milan Design Week, last seen in 2006, felt like a long-awaited evolution. The themes of presence, nature, and human interaction with technology were not only timely but also deeply resonant. At a moment when conversations around AI, automation, and climate change dominate cultural discourse, Drift Us offered a quiet yet powerful reminder: even in a hyper-technological world, it is the human touch, our physical and emotional presence, that remains central.
“Wind is the driving force of evolution and innovation in nature,” DRIFT reflected. “Without movement, there is no progress.” In Drift Us, that sentiment takes elegant, responsive form, inviting each of us to step into the role of the wind, and in doing so, recognize our potential to move not only objects but ideas and futures forward.
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