Third International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

This paper explores artistic responses to emergent technologies of surveillance. It posits looking at the military drone as the paradigmatic surveillant eye, and proposes that the primary characteristic of “droning,” or the ontological nature of surveillance as a type of image-creation through algorithmic data gathering, is predation by aesthetics. What sort of relationship is created between the drone machine and its victims? How does the eye of the drone “program” the political potentialities of those it’s watching? I posit a new organization of space through a topology created by and through algorithmic objects, resulting in an aestheticized posthuman with unique potentialities and desires. Also at stake is the efficacy of artistic techniques of camouflage and hyper-visibility that try to use the very machines and techniques of surveillance they purport to disrupt are, and whether, in creating/viewing these works, we become complicit in surveillance networks. If the nature of surveillance is predatory, does engagement with this artwork relegate us to the status of prey? Lastly, I explore a new form of posthuman collectivity might be realized through a conjunction of digital mapping technologies and conceptual art that critiques and subverts drone vision.