ABSTRACT
In Chapter 5, we ask: How does the increasingly ubiquitous aerial drone affect and depend on new forms of distributed, wireless visuality? While a lot of attention has been paid to the trajectory of drone technology as it has arisen out of military contexts and has since invaded urban spaces, we examine the essential role played by drones’ camera technology, visual controls and wireless relations. To understand the implications of drones (both small and recreational, and large and lethal), we look at how they are reconfiguring personal, public and environmental visibility - or what it means to see and be seen today via drone cameras. Drone vision pushes the boundaries of, and tests new understandings of, what is considered “public.” This chapter also examines the semiautonomous vision technology that allows drones to act in the world and to control their alternative viewfinder from the skies. It explores the “creepy agency” of drone cameras as a factor of the new visual knowledge they are able to produce and probes the meaning of “autonomy” for these machines that act like insect or animal in their unpredictable movements and their ability to swarm or to take the position of the “fly on the wall” but also their waywardness. From this, we argue that drone vision presents us with a key case of an altered sociality triggered by a highly contested camera consciousness. Given the autonomy of these perceptual systems, again, a new camera consciousness is required, and the question of how we experience and make sense of drone vision continues to be vitally important and remains a live question.
