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| resilients:unmanned_aerial_ecologies [2013-05-14 09:32] – alkan | resilients:unmanned_aerial_ecologies [2013-05-14 13:43] – alkan |
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| By Honor Harger, April 2013 | By Honor Harger, April 2013 |
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| <blockquote>//This text originally appeared on Honor Harger's blog as [[http://honorharger.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/unmanned-aerial-ecologies-proto-drones-airspace-and-canaries-in-the-mine/|'Unmanned Aerial Ecologies']], and is republished here with permission.//</blockquote> | [[http://c-astral.com/|{{http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7285/8738492108_5cf0ae9ed2_o.jpg}}]] |
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| C-Astral Bramor UAV during landing, Kilpisjaervi, Lapland, November 2012, courtesy of Marko Peljhan | C-Astral Bramor UAV during landing, Kilpisjaervi, Lapland, November 2012, courtesy of Marko Peljhan |
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| On Tuesday 16 April 2013, I gave a talk in Brussels at the seminar, //[[http://thedigitalnow.be/?page_id=178|Look Up in the Sky!]]//, which was organised by Cimatics as part of their [[http://thedigitalnow.be/?page_id=7|Digital Now]] programme, to coincide with the Brussels Art Fair. Michel van Dartel moderated, Bram Crevits introduced the exhibition he curated for the //Digital Now//, and [[http://booktwo.org/|James Bridle]] gave an excellent talk on drones called ‘A Quiet Disposition’, which he’ll be [[http://is.gd/jamestalk|reprising at Lighthouse]] in Brighton, on 9 May 2013. | On Tuesday 16 April 2013, I gave a talk in Brussels at the seminar, //[[http://thedigitalnow.be/?page_id=178|Look Up in the Sky!]]//, which was organised by Cimatics as part of their [[http://thedigitalnow.be/?page_id=7|Digital Now]] programme to coincide with the Brussels Art Fair. Michel van Dartel moderated, Bram Crevits introduced the exhibition he curated for the programme, and [[http://booktwo.org/|James Bridle]] gave an excellent talk on drones called ‘A Quiet Disposition’, which he’ll be [[http://is.gd/jamestalk|reprising at Lighthouse]] in Brighton, on 9 May 2013. |
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| My talk followed on from [[http://decelerator.blogspot.fr/2012/11/a-drones-eye-view-revealing-killing.html|a piece I wrote last November]], which looked at contemporary artists’ responses to drones. It was an attempt to provide some recent art historical context. Below is a rough account of what I said, annotated and illustrated where practical. | My talk followed on from [[http://decelerator.blogspot.fr/2012/11/a-drones-eye-view-revealing-killing.html|a piece I wrote last November]], which looked at contemporary artists’ responses to drones. It was an attempt to provide some recent art-historical context. Below is a rough account of what I said, annotated and illustrated where practical. |
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| Tonight, I’m going to talk about the environment that we find drones in. We are going see plenty of drones this evening, in James Bridle’s presentation, so my job is to begin with the natural history piece, and place drones in the wider context of their ecology. So to start, I want to refer to the title of the symposium. Because when you say look up in the air at the sky, I immediately see this: | Tonight, I’m going to talk about the environment that we find drones in. We are going see plenty of drones this evening, in James Bridle’s presentation, so my job is to begin with the natural history piece, and place drones in the wider context of their ecology. So to start, I want to refer to the title of the symposium. Because when you say look up in the air at the sky, I immediately see this: |
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| In the Air by Nerea Calvillo & collaborators | [[http://intheair.es/info/project-credits.html|{{http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7286/8737373589_133cf3da50_o.png}}]] |
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| | In the Air by Nerea Calvillo and collaborators |
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| Airspace. The space where airwaves propagate. Information space. And that’s the space that I’ve been interrogating my whole career, both as an artist with [[http://v2.nl/archive/works/the-frequency-clock|r a d i o q u a l i a]], as a writer, now mainly on the science blog, [[http://decelerator.blogspot.com/|Particle Decelerator]], and as a curator over the past 15 years. | Airspace. The space where airwaves propagate. Information space. And that’s the space that I’ve been interrogating my whole career, both as an artist with [[http://v2.nl/archive/works/the-frequency-clock|r a d i o q u a l i a]], as a writer, now mainly on the science blog, [[http://decelerator.blogspot.com/|Particle Decelerator]], and as a curator over the past 15 years. |
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| | [[http://spectrumatlas.org/|{{http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7282/8737373733_e3c63e8d95_o.png}}]] |
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| Atlas of Electromagnetic Space by Jose Luis de Vicente & Bestario (2008). Co-commissioned by AV Festival 08, directed by Honor Harger | Atlas of Electromagnetic Space by Jose Luis de Vicente & Bestario (2008). Co-commissioned by AV Festival 08, directed by Honor Harger |
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| We often ask ourselves, at events such as the [[http://thedigitalnow.be/?page_id=7|Digital Now]], if it still relevant for us to be talking about media art today, when technology has become pervasive, and therefore mundane. Surely, as it becomes enfolded into the practice of all artists, media art as a form becomes obsolete?Well I would argue the opposite, that media artists are some of the culturally deep and urgent guides to a landscape which is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate using the maps and compasses we’ve grown up with. I want to show how media artists are the veritable canaries in the mine, detecting weak signals about how our technolgised world is shaping up, and giving us ways of both perceiving this changing world, and acting within it. In particular, I want to show how media artists have, for the past 15 years, [[http://is.gd/situational|created projects]] which presciently framed and contextualised the issues and technologies which have collided to enable today’s drone-wars. | We often ask ourselves, at events such as the [[http://thedigitalnow.be/?page_id=7|Digital Now]], if it still relevant for us to be talking about media art today, when technology has become pervasive, and therefore mundane. Surely, as it becomes enfolded into the practice of all artists, media art as a form becomes obsolete?Well I would argue the opposite, that media artists are some of the culturally deep and urgent guides to a landscape which is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate using the maps and compasses we’ve grown up with. I want to show how media artists are the veritable canaries in the mine, detecting weak signals about how our technolgised world is shaping up, and giving us ways of both perceiving this changing world, and acting within it. In particular, I want to show how media artists have, for the past 15 years, [[http://is.gd/situational|created projects]] which presciently framed and contextualised the issues and technologies which have collided to enable today’s drone-wars. |
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| | [[http://90.146.8.18/en/archives/festival_archive/festival_catalogs/festival_artikel.asp?iProjectID=14299|{{http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7285/8738491916_ce6f47758e_o.jpg}}]] |
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| Situational Awareness by Marko Peljhan (2007) at Ars Electronica, Austria, 2007 | Situational Awareness by Marko Peljhan (2007) at Ars Electronica, Austria, 2007 |
| Many of the artists who are making some of the most interesting and impactful work about drones have often found them whilst studying the sky using [[http://is.gd/WorldC4U|a whole armory of other instruments]]. They are concerned with the politics, power structures, architectural infrastructures and mediated activity of the network. | Many of the artists who are making some of the most interesting and impactful work about drones have often found them whilst studying the sky using [[http://is.gd/WorldC4U|a whole armory of other instruments]]. They are concerned with the politics, power structures, architectural infrastructures and mediated activity of the network. |
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| Trevor Paglen with telescope. Photograph from MIT. | [[http://arts.mit.edu/va/artist/paglen/|{{http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7284/8738491924_6bda6870b0_o.jpg}}]] |
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| | Trevor Paglen with telescope. Photograph from MIT |
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| The network is the drone’s native environment. So, we must – like our colleagues in biology – see them as part of this wider ecology, if we want to better understand their use and their meaning. So, to begin, let’s have a look at the features of this environment. | The network is the drone’s native environment. So, we must – like our colleagues in biology – see them as part of this wider ecology, if we want to better understand their use and their meaning. So, to begin, let’s have a look at the features of this environment. |
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| US predator drone in flight. | [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20407285|{{http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7288/8737373407_84cf2e48da_o.jpg}}]] |
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| | US predator drone in flight |
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| ===An Environment of Invisible Infrastructures=== | ===An Environment of Invisible Infrastructures=== |
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| So ingrained has that metaphor become, that [[http://www.citrix.com/lang/English/lp/lp_2328330.asp|a recent survey]] revealed that over half of all Americans think that bad weather effects cloud computing. | So ingrained has that metaphor become, that [[http://www.citrix.com/lang/English/lp/lp_2328330.asp|a recent survey]] revealed that over half of all Americans think that bad weather effects cloud computing. |
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| | [[http://www.citrix.com/news/announcements/oct-2012/cloud-confusion-survey.html|{{http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7281/8737373673_776a0833fe_o.jpg}}]] |
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| Cloud computing survey commissioned by Citrix, August 2012 | Cloud computing survey commissioned by Citrix, August 2012 |
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| The disappearance of our technological landscape from view is a serious political and ethical issue. If we can’t see something, it’s very difficult to comprehend it, let alone to have any political agency in acting on it. This was one of the principle concerns for the [[http://bureauit.org/|Bureau of Inverse Technology[bit]]] who made this proto-drone 15 years ago. | The disappearance of our technological landscape from view is a serious political and ethical issue. If we can’t see something, it’s very difficult to comprehend it, let alone to have any political agency in acting on it. This was one of the principle concerns for the [[http://bureauit.org/|Bureau of Inverse Technology[bit]]] who made this proto-drone 15 years ago. |
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| | {{http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7284/8738492140_0a29b040f0_o.jpg}} |
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| ===bitplane by Bureau of Inverse Technology=== | ===bitplane by Bureau of Inverse Technology=== |
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| One of their canonical pieces is //[[http://bureauit.org/plane|bitplane]]//. It was a radio-controlled airplane, equipped with a video camera and transmitter. In 1997, it was launched on a series of sorties over the Silicon Valley in California. Guided by the live video feed from the plane, the pilot on the ground was able to, [[http://bureauit.org/plane|as the artists put it]], 'steer the plane deep into the glittering heartlands of the Information Age'. | One of their canonical pieces is //[[http://bureauit.org/plane|bitplane]]//. It was a radio-controlled airplane, equipped with a video camera and transmitter. In 1997, it was launched on a series of sorties over the Silicon Valley in California. Guided by the live video feed from the plane, the pilot on the ground was able to, [[http://bureauit.org/plane|as the artists put it]], 'steer the plane deep into the glittering heartlands of the Information Age'. |
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| | <html><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/qHG-1izv5S4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></html> |
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| It is evident that the artists are expressing a deep concern not only with the militarised component of the military-industrial complex. They are correlating the spaces where the manufacture of weapons and the manufacture of information technology both take place. They are critiquing the economics of the area, the infrastructure of technology, the sites where secret research takes place, the locales where aircraft systems are thought-up and built. | It is evident that the artists are expressing a deep concern not only with the militarised component of the military-industrial complex. They are correlating the spaces where the manufacture of weapons and the manufacture of information technology both take place. They are critiquing the economics of the area, the infrastructure of technology, the sites where secret research takes place, the locales where aircraft systems are thought-up and built. |
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| This is the central concern of [[|http://www.ladomir.net/bio-summary|Marko Peljhan]]. | This is the central concern of [[|http://www.ladomir.net/bio-summary|Marko Peljhan]]. |
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| Marko Peljhan, photographed in the Arctic. | Marko Peljhan, photographed in the Arctic. |
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A very special thank you to Marko Peljhan. Sincere thanks also to Kate Rich, Natalie Jeremijenko, and Usman Haque who helped situate this research. And thank you to all the artists and technologists cited, including Trevor Paglen, Timo Arnall, James Bridle, Mariele Neudecker and Liam Young. Full credits and references at: http://is.gd/uavtalk |
A very special thank you to Marko Peljhan. Sincere thanks also to Kate Rich, Natalie Jeremijenko, and Usman Haque who helped situate this research. And thank you to all the artists and technologists cited, including Trevor Paglen, Timo Arnall, James Bridle, Mariele Neudecker and Liam Young. Full credits and references at: http://is.gd/uavtalk |
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| | <blockquote>//This text originally appeared on Honor Harger's blog as [[http://honorharger.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/unmanned-aerial-ecologies-proto-drones-airspace-and-canaries-in-the-mine/|'Unmanned Aerial Ecologies']], and is republished here with permission.//</blockquote> |
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