George Watson Fellowship Public Lecture | Drone Theory

Event Details

Date:

Thursday, 07 July 2016

Time:

6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

Room:

Room 224 (Digital Learning Studio)

UQ Location:

Joyce Ackroyd Building (St Lucia)

URL:

Event category(s):

Full Description:: Drone Theory
Mark Andrejevic, Pomona College

Alex Rivera has described the figure of the drone as “an incandescent reflection, the most extreme expression of who we are and what we’ve become generally,” as a way of describing the contemporary preoccupation with the figure of the drone. What might it mean to describe the emerging logics of “becoming drones”, and what might such a description have to say about the changing face of interactivity in the digital era?

This presentation treats the figure of the drone as an avatar for the interface of emerging forms of automated data capture, sense making, and response. Understood in this way, the figure of the drone can be mobilized to consider the ways in which automated data collection reconfigures a range of sites of struggle — after all, it is a figure born of armed conflict, but with roots in remote sensing (and action at a distance). This presentation draws on recent case studies to develop a theoretical approach to the fascination of the figure of the drone while also exploring (and critiquing) theoretical approaches that replicate drone logic.