tryadrift.com
Adrift
Put something into the world.
Go to the water.
Write something. Seal it. Throw it in.
You don't know where it'll go.
You don't know who'll find it.
The water decides.
One
Go to
the water
Adrift only works by the water.
Take something you want to put into the world and go to the sea.
You cannot do this from your sofa.
Not at the water
You need to be beside open water to throw a bottle.
Distances shown are an example. The app is still being built.
Two
Put something inside
A thought.
A photograph.
Something worth finding.
If it wouldn't fit inside a real bottle, it doesn't belong in Adrift.
That is the whole test. A bottle holds a sheet of paper and a photograph, so that is what Adrift holds.
Three
Let it go
Once you throw it, it's gone.
You can't track it.
You can't choose its destination.
You can't take it back.
Four
The water decides
Bottles move through a living digital ocean, influenced by real world water and ocean current data.
They aren't sent to people.
They simply travel.
Influenced by that data, not a scientific simulation of it, and drawn here rather than observed: nobody watches a bottle move, including the person who threw it.
Five
Something
washed up
Open Adrift when you're by the water.
If a bottle is nearby, go and get it.
Nearby
One bottle in the water
40 m
Nobody receives a bottle.
Someone has to find it.
Six
Keep it.
Or let it go again.
Read what's inside.
Keep it in your collection forever.
Or add something of your own and set it adrift again.
214
days
8,419
km
3
finders
Thrown
North Sea
Found, added to, thrown again
Norwegian coast
Found, added to, thrown again
Iceland
Found
Outer Hebrides
An imagined journey, shown to explain the idea. No bottle has travelled yet.
Not another social network.
- No followers.
- No likes.
- No feed.
- No algorithm deciding what you should see.
- No engagement scores.
Just people, water and whatever happens to wash ashore.
Everyone gets
the same ocean.
Adrift is free. Always.
- No ads.
- No premium bottles.
- No paid reach.
- No subscriptions required to participate.
If Adrift eventually becomes expensive to run, people who love it will be able to support it voluntarily.
Nobody will ever have to pay to belong.
Be there for
the first cast.
One day, the Adrift ocean will be full of bottles.
But somebody has to throw the first ones.
We're looking for the first people around the world to go to the water and set something adrift.