Shylight is inspired by a highly evolved natural mechanism called “nyctinasty”. It regulates that certain types of flowers close at night, for self-defense and to conserve their resources. This principle relates very much to human emotions: most manmade objects and buildings have a static form, while everything natural in this world, including people, are subject to constant metamorphosis and adaptation to their surroundings.

With Shylight, Studio Drift is exploring those changes that express character and emotions in an installation of inanimate objects. Shylight descends to blossom in all its glorious beauty, to subsequently close and retreat upwards again. The goal with Shylight is to find live, emotion and personality in dead material.

More than fifty meters of silk, hundreds of man-hours and precise handwork combined with refined technology are used for the realisation of the Shylight project for the Rijksmuseum. Its choreography can be programmed to an exact and graceful dance performance.

Shylight is the result of a collaboration between engineers, seamstresses, computer programmers and all specialties of the artists and designers that work at Studio Drift.