Our aerial performance Desert Swarm at Noor Riyadh Festival, one of the largest global public art initiatives, was DRIFT’s biggest drone art installation to date: with 3,000 drones performing a nightly choreography mimicking a bird swarm!
Excitingly, this public art performance broke 2 Guinness World Records! With Desert Swarm being the largest drone bird swarm ever flown and the festival also launched the most drones in a week.
Desert Swarm is a poetic blend of art and technology. Based on complex algorithmic patterns developed from more than ten years of research into starlings’ flight behavior, the site-specific artwork mimics the birds’ murmurations, creating the illusion of a flock of birds floating above the night sky in unison, and reacting to the space around them.
Desert Swarm is curated by Jérôme Sans.
Read more:
Harper’s Bazaar Arabia – Noor Riyadh 2023: Inside The Biggest and Brightest Festival of Light And Art In The World
Architectural Digest – Noor Riyadh 2023: The 11 Best Lighting Installations at Saudi Arabia’s Light Art Festival
Timeout – Get inspired at the free Noor Riyadh exhibition