Drone-topia as method

ABSTRACT

The figure of the civilian camera drone remains ambiguous and contested. Its promises and perils shape contemporary imaginaries of future mobilities and visualities. Donny the Drone by Mackenzie Sheppard is one example of a fictional short film that creatively engages with such ambivalent scenarios in the story about a sentient quadcopter. In this article, I explore this techno-futurist narrative in how it serves as a heuristic for a mobile utopia. Themes of mobility and aerial commons, visuality and cosmopolitanism, relationality and affective subjectivity, along with domination and political mobilization emerge from the utopian thought experiment about a camera drone becoming human. Ultimately, I show how the evolving figure of the civilian drone serves as an experimental platform and utopian method towards elevated visions for an imaginative reconstitution of society.

KEYWORDS:

• Civilian drone
• utopia
• science fiction
• narrative analysis
• aerial gaze
• surveillance
• mobile commons

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.