Created by Dutch art and design studio DRIFT for Design Miami/ Basel 2021, Shy Synchrony is a poetic, upside-down landscape of moving Shylights perpetually blooming in mid-air, inviting visitors to contemplate natural rhythms and their soothing effect on our state of being. The site-specific installation was part a larger multi-sensory experience featuring Forest of Space, a site-specific pavilion by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto.  

Shy Synchrony was presented by Superblue in collaboration with Therme Art and MindMaze, a neuroscience pioneer creating groundbreaking brain restoration and learning technology that is intended to create digital, multi-sensorial solutions and activities for mental and physical wellbeing. For Shy Synchrony, a unique headset was developed with sensors that capture brain relaxation patterns, facial muscular activities and heart rate variations, leveraging sophisticated AI algorithms to guide the artwork’s expressions and movement patterns in real time.  

As part of visitors' experience of Shy Synchrony during Miami Art Week, a series of guided meditations were hosted in which participants wore the custom headsets and witnessed their internal bodily state manifest visually via a unique choreography of the Shylights. Viewing and understanding their impact on the artwork's choreography triggered their visual-cortical neuro-biofeedback loop, turning audiences into co-participants of the work—which, in turn, affected their inner states and further impacted the artwork too.  

In a time that is defined by human isolation and a disconnect from nature, DRIFT’s practice aims to address the need for a new alignment with our environment and a return to the strength of communal interaction. Shy Synchrony explores our innate response, individually and collectively, to natural movements, creating a deepened sense of awareness for the singular qualities of all environments we traverse.  

In conjunction with the presentation of Shy Synchrony, Therme Art hosted the Wellbeing Culture Forum Art and Architecture as Healing. The talk took inspiration from the artwork to explore the fundamental recontouring needed at the levels of policy, design, community engagement, environmentalism, and urban planning in the construction of environments that heal rather than constrain.

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