Earlier this year, CR posed the question ‘are websites becoming beautiful again?’ in response to several recent cases of web design where creative expression was prioritised over functional efficiency.
One compelling addition to that conversation is Drift, a browser-based audiovisual experience by Waave Orchestra that turns the act of pressing play into something responsive, cinematic and entirely unique. Created by Manuel Nogueira – founder of São Paulo-based audiovisual production company Magma – the project uses html and JavaScript to create a new film every time the track is played.
At the centre of Drift is an original composition by Nogueira, featuring vocals from Olugbenga Adelekan, of Metronomy fame, and drums by Victoria Smith, a former touring member of The xx who currently plays with Soulwax.
While the song itself remains unchanging, the accompanying visuals are constantly re-edited in real time by a system built directly into the browser. Ocean waves, spectral figures, dolphins and other such fragmented black-and-white imagery appear and disappear in random combinations, meaning there is no definitive cut of the film – every version is created by the user and experienced in the moment.
The project originally began much more conventionally, as a search for visuals to accompany a vinyl release. But as Nogueira started experimenting with his own archive of photographs and videos, the concept evolved into something far more ambitious. ‘Failed’ Polaroids pulled from his personal archive guided the project’s construction, with new images created with AI building a visual database that could be endlessly rearranged through code.
“The music was created slowly and in an old-fashioned way,” Nogueira explains. “An idea comes quickly, but then I spend a lot of time finding the structure, the textures, and understanding what it wants to become…. At some point, I managed to compose a song that interested both [Olugbenga and Victoria] … that brought us to the final version: my synthesisers and composition, his voice and her drums.”
Nogueira then divided the song into 20 sections, defined by compositional shifts in mood and intensity. The system then selects and assembles different visual scenes for each segment during playback, producing what he estimates to be around 82.6 trillion possible structural variations. The only constant arrives at the track’s climax, which always resolves with the same final image.
Alongside the main work is The Multiverse, an expanded version in which nine separate films play simultaneously in sync with the same song, allowing users to navigate between parallel visual interpretations in real time.
Entirely conceived and developed by Nogueira, Drift is a compelling blend of music, generative film and web design that treats the humble browser as an artistic medium in its own right.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.creativereview.co.uk ’
