What is a Drone? Technology at the service of contemporary art
Some thoughts on the current use of “drone” technology in the art industry
By Marta Lorenzo Jaudenes,(@MartaLorenzoJ)My Art Diary
I have posed myself this very question and, in particular, its applications and uses in the art field when I started to write this post. Well, as a quick definition, a drone is any unmanned aerial Vehicle (UAV).
El CAAC de Sevilla a vista de drone - Protecturi - Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo from Joan Lesan on Vimeo.
Image of the stand showcasing the canvases of KATSU. Fair of Silicon Valley. Source: www.goodfellasmagazine.com
Another example of the use of drones this time within a museum, will be shown from September at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London during the Design Festival of the British capital city. It will consist of an installation developed by the prestigious studio Superflux (they have exhibited at the MOMA of New York City and at Ars Electrónica, among other venues) called "The Drone Aviary". In particular, 15 drones will fly over the John Madejski garden of the museum to interact in a recreational way with the visitors, thus getting away from the dark side associated with the military use of these small flying objects. How could daily life be in a future city where human beings would interact with this type of technology? Sounds just like a science-fiction film. It’s scary even to think of it!
Free hardware systems such as Arduino and affordable methods of digital manufacturing such as personal 3D printers and laser cutters have resulted in many projects with increasingly complex and feasible designs. The FabLAB of LABoral is a hotbed of ideas and projects. However, What is a fab Lab? It is a short name for Fabrication Laboratory, and initiative started by the prestigious MIT-Massachussets Institute of Technology. FabLabs are fundamental spaces for artists working with the new technologies, they provide them with access to machines that they usually cannot afford and they foster, as well, the exchange with other professionals, which helps not only individual, but also collective creativity. A FabLab shows how digital manufacturing is challenging traditional design processes.
Regarding specifically drones, LABoral has been researching this technology for several years. A good example of this is the winning proposal of the grant Next Things in 2013, “Flone, The flying phone”, where the winning collective turned a Smartphone in to an autonomous flying device, like a "multimedia drone", that could be programmed to perform tasks like taking photographs or recording a video. The aim was to make air space accessible for any citizen as a research platform, providing a wide range of applications to be explored, using only a mobile phone.
Image of the “launching” process of "Flone, The flying phone" at LABoral last year.
This year, the Grant Next Things, a joint call by LABoral and Telefónica I+D, has been awarded to the artist Sam Kronick, who is currently developing his residency at the art centre of Gijón with his project “Slow Internet Café”. Last June 1 Sam developed in the park of La Providencia in Gijón his action “The eyes of the cloud”. The aim of this action was to make us reflect, using drones, upon our daily relationship with the Internet, and its implications.
Sam used a drone, which was actually a router with wings that provided wi-fi connection free-of-charge in a limited space and that was equipped with a camera that captured, not birds-eye views of humanised territories, but, staring at the sky, images of the clouds. As Montaña Hurtado explained in a post on this same blog “The public of this action that connected to the wi-fi network received in their smartphones the images of the clouds captured by the drone, but they could not do any other thing. They could not use the Internet freely. All they could do was staring at the clouds to stop and think about the plans of the Internet giants to colonise third-world countries with drones, drones that each year cause thousands of civilian casualties and that are used by governments for spionage purposes”. What have we lost when we assume that we all communicate according to the same regulations dictated by the network? Privacy, diversity, everyday reality?
For all those who want to learn about electronics, aerodynamics and digital manufacturing, I remind you that LABoral offers this summer several courses aimed at introducing participants to a “manufacture/use/repair/recycle” consumption model, opposed to the capitalist “buy/use/discard”.