Avant Arte, the worlds largest online community for art lovers have collaborated with Dutch collective DRIFT for a unique project titled Another Future. Fusing elements of nature and technology, the ambitious project took the humble dandelion and created an art piece with LED lights.
DRIFT was founded by artists Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta in 2007 and they look to ‘manifests the phenomena and hidden properties of nature with the use of technology’. In particular, they have a fascination with the dandelion and its extraordinary natural architecture.
“After 15 years of studying dandelions, I saw so much cleverness in this plant, that doesn’t have a central brain. There is so much tactility. Somehow this plant feels its environment and is aware of it, in a completely different way than how humans and animals think. I could talk for hours about dandelions.” – Lonneke Gordijn, DRIFT
The dandelion is a survivor – fragile yet strong and beautiful. For the art piece Another Life, the flowers were carefully selected and then reconstructed by hand, seed by seed around an LED bulb. DRIFT hope to raise fundamental questions about what life is ‘by learning from the Earth’s underlying mechanisms, the work highlights an essential need to re-establish our connection to it.’
“Nature is our past, present and future. Technology is an extension of Nature and should only be used to connect humanity to Nature, not to disconnect.” – Ralph Nauta, DRIFT
FACTBOX: Another Future consists of nine dandelights made from real dandelion seeds, hand-picked, and glued seed–by–seed to LED lights. An edition of 50, it is made from conductive print, dandelion seeds, LEDs & plexiglass. Includes a USB-C cable and a location-specific plug. Price: €4600 excluding VAT.
“After all the years of working on editions, this is the first time we have collaborated with an artist from our home country which makes it especially exciting. DRIFT’s artworks and projects have fascinated us for many years now and so it’s really exciting to work with them on ANOTHER FUTURE. In such a fast-paced world, and especially right now, it feels essential that we slow down occasionally and look back to nature and think about how nature and technology could work together. I think this piece speaks that message beautifully.” – Christian Luiten, Co-Founder & Creative Director of Avant Arte
