The one-day hybrid conference looks to present contemporary critiques of drone-technologies, their scopic regimes and increasing reliance on so-called AI systems. Instead of fetishising the presumed autonomy of these weapons, this conference looks at the logistic dependencies, the operational chains of humans, and the infrastructural layers that enable them; as well as their relation to cinematic technologies.
We currently observe a trend towards the increasing mass use consumer-off-the-shelf drones in war theatres. This trend includes a shift from expensive, large, long-distance, remote controlled, military drones towards inexpessive, small, and closely-remote civilian drones which were adapted for reconnaissance and grenade drops. First-person-view-drones today even serve as replacement for ballistic artillery.
A second Dronomation trend is the bureaucratization and accelerating automation of killing in war zones. In this scenario drones produce visual and geospatial data for databases and machine learning processing. Automation appears increasingly as an excuse for a permissive policy of targeting, where responsability is deferred to a seemingly objective machine.
Numerous artistic works have investigated drones in the past, but the developments of the recent military conflicts, as well as the growth of drone use in the consumer area, demonstrate the need for an update.
*The conference will be held in English.