Droned Life: Data, Narrative, and the Aesthetics of Worldmaking

无人机生活：数据、叙事和世界创造的美学

• 批准号: MR/W010429/1
• 负责人: Beryl Pong
• 金额: $ 112.1万
• 依托单位: University of Cambridge
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=MR%2FW010429%2F1
• 关键词: Droned; Life; Data; Narrative; Aesthetics

Critics have noted the 'worldmaking' power of drones (Stubblefield 2020), but the political implications of that philosophical term for this emerging technology, and for the way figures from the creative economy are responding to and shaping its development, have yet to be scrutinized in depth. 'Droned Life' sits at the cross-section of interdisciplinary scholarship, with a team situated across English, Politics, Computer Science, and Digital Media. It investigates how drones and their physical and digital infrastructures produce new ways of interpreting and experiencing the world, and how imaginaries and aesthetics facilitate the widespread and increasing use of intrusive technologies. It is driven by an overarching research question--what are the aesthetics of drones?--with aesthetics defined as art, embodiment (aisthesis), and as what makes politics perceptible and normalized (Rancière 2004). How do aesthetics inform the politics of prosthesis in relation to drones--seen, for instance, in the 'targeted killings' in the War on Terror, or in the security breaches made by domestic drones at Heathrow airport? In light of the increasingly common use of drones in law enforcement and surveillance, how do the aesthetic dimensions of drones serve to facilitate more nefarious purposes, such as the objectification of human bodies into things to photograph, track, and target in the name of safety and convenience; or the transformation of human lives into data to monitor and aggregate for anticipating trends and collective behaviour? How have drone aesthetics helped to dissolve military and civilian boundaries to help establish the 'world' as we currently know it--where data, algorithm, and artificial intelligence have become endemic to private and public security, and increasingly, to everyday life?To answer this research question, this FLF programme draws from theories of worldmaking (Goodman 1978, Nunning 2015) to examine what new perceptual, legal, and geopolitical worlds drones create. On the one hand, drones make new worlds because they mediatize and create uniquely embodied, virtual experiences. An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) can be operated thousands of miles away from the drone pilot, creating new aerial views and functioning as a prosthesis for perceptual experience through the digital screen. On the other hand, drones make worlds because they establish, even while reinforcing, their own political justifications. Military drones, for instance, employ the real-time circulation of diagrammatic signs to establish a possible, rather than pre-identified, target; this logic of pre-emption has profound consequences for international law. High-street drones, meanwhile, occupy a liminal space between aircraft and plaything, and they continue to disrupt straightforward boundaries in relation to privacy, security, and civil liberties. Because drones involve manipulations in narrative, perspective, visual framing, and the reading of multimedia, and because they create intersections between human and machinic agency, there is a complicity between the drone object and the cultural and interpretive practices undergirding it. This FLF will examine the worldmaking dimensions of drones through: 1. the empirical study of four areas of the aesthetic arts--literature, film, visual arts, and game design concerned with drones, and 2. through a series of co-designed knowledge exchange activities with non-academic partners to examine how drones have become a part of our world. It focuses on three collaborators and their respective methodologies: data activism (with the NGO Drone Wars UK), virtual and immersive technologies (with the graphics firm Human Studio), and museum curation (with the Imperial War Museum). With drones, sensors, AI, and simulation all combining to produce new modes of worldmaking over the past decade, it is important to reflect on what worlds are being created, and to stage interventions around them.

批评人士已经注意到无人机的“世界制造”能力（Stubblefield 2020），但这一哲学术语对这一新兴技术的政治含义，以及创意经济人物对其发展的反应和塑造方式，还有待深入研究。“无人驾驶的生活”位于跨学科奖学金的交叉点，其团队来自英语、政治、计算机科学和数字媒体。它研究了无人机及其物理和数字基础设施如何产生解释和体验世界的新方式，以及想象和美学如何促进侵入性技术的广泛和不断增加的使用。它是由一个首要的研究问题驱动的——无人机的美学是什么？——美学被定义为艺术，体现（美学），并使政治可感知和正常化（ranci<e:1> 2004）。美学是如何告知与无人机相关的假肢政治的——例如，在反恐战争中的“定点清除”中，或者在希思罗机场由国产无人机造成的安全漏洞中？鉴于无人机在执法和监视中的使用越来越普遍，无人机的美学尺寸如何为更邪恶的目的服务，例如以安全和方便的名义将人体物化成可以拍摄，跟踪和瞄准的东西；或者将人类生活转化为数据，用于监测和汇总，以预测趋势和集体行为？无人机美学是如何帮助消除军事和民用的界限，帮助建立我们目前所知道的“世界”的？在这个世界里，数据、算法和人工智能已经成为私人和公共安全的固有特征，并越来越多地融入日常生活。为了回答这个研究问题，本FLF计划借鉴了世界制造理论（Goodman 1978, Nunning 2015）来研究无人机创造的新的感知、法律和地缘政治世界。一方面，无人机创造了新的世界，因为它们调解并创造了独特的虚拟体验。无人驾驶飞行器（UAV）可以在距离无人机驾驶员数千英里的地方操作，创造新的鸟瞰图，并通过数字屏幕充当感知体验的假体。另一方面，无人机创造了世界，因为它们建立了自己的政治理由，甚至在强化它们的政治理由的同时。例如，军用无人机利用图形符号的实时循环来确定可能的目标，而不是预先识别目标；这种先发制人的逻辑对国际法产生了深远的影响。与此同时，商业街的无人机在飞机和玩具之间占据了一个有限的空间，它们继续破坏与隐私、安全和公民自由有关的直接界限。因为无人机涉及对叙事、视角、视觉框架和多媒体阅读的操纵，因为它们创造了人类和机器代理之间的交集，所以无人机对象与支撑它的文化和解释实践之间存在着共通之处。本FLF将通过以下方式检查无人机的世界制造尺寸：美学艺术的四个领域——文学、电影、视觉艺术和与无人机相关的游戏设计——的实证研究；通过一系列与非学术合作伙伴共同设计的知识交流活动，研究无人机如何成为我们世界的一部分。它专注于三位合作者及其各自的方法：数据行动主义（与非政府组织Drone Wars UK合作），虚拟和沉浸式技术（与图形公司Human Studio合作），以及博物馆策展（与帝国战争博物馆合作）。在过去的十年里，无人机、传感器、人工智能和模拟技术结合在一起，产生了新的世界创造模式，反思正在创造什么样的世界，并围绕它们进行干预，这一点很重要。