Aerial Play: Medium, Mobility, Communication, and Culture
Book published as part of Palgrave Macmillan's Geographies of Media Series
Book Description This book explores recreational uses of consumer drones from the lenses of media ecology, mobile communication, mobilities research, and science and technology studies. In the provocative, multi-disciplinary ethnography, camera drones emerge as mobile media for meaningful play. Aerial Play thus widens perspectives onto the flying camera as foremost unmanned aircraft, spying and surveillance tool, or weapon towards a more comprehensive understanding of its potentials. How should we situate drone practices in recreational spaces? What ways of seeing, moving, and being do hobby drones open up? Across chapters about drone geography, communication, mobility, visuality, and human-machine relations, the book introduces novel frameworks for drone affordances, such as communication on the fly, disembodied mobilities, auratic vertical play, and drone-mindedness. In the mobile companionship with her own drone, Hildebrand contributes a new “auto-technographic” method for the self-reflective study of media and mobility. Ultimately, the grounded and aerial fieldwork illuminates new technological, mobile, visual, and social relations in everyday spaces. Endorsements “Julia M. Hildebrand’s understanding of hobby drones as a ‘mobile medium’ offers novel insights into drone imaginaries and practices. With her rich theoretical background and innovative empirical research, her book will certainly be a reference in drone-related scholarship and interactions between humans and emerging technologies.” –Chantal Lavallée, Assistant Professor at Royal Military College Saint-Jean, Canada “In a short amount of time, drones have become a ubiquitous technology. And while scholarly attention has been focused on commercial and military contexts, the recreational drone has been relatively overlooked. That is, until Aerial Play: Drone Medium, Mobility, Communication and Culture. Aerial Play addresses some of the complex debates around quotidian surveillance and mundane mobilities and how these practices recalibrate how we understand media ecology, mobile communication, mobilities research, and science and technology studies. Traversing themes such as drone geography, communication, mobility and new visualities, Aerial Play explores how drones can help us reinvent our digital methods. Hildebrand’s playful and yet robust approach encourages us to consider the drone as not just part of mobile methods for ‘auto-technographic’ self-reflection but also how they invite us to rethink the paradigm between media and mobility.” – Larissa Hjorth, RMIT University, Australia “In Aerial Play, Julia M. Hildebrand provides a serious, scholarly, and accessible study of a highly significant new medium that is altering the world that we live in, and the way that we view ourselves. Drones are not simply toys, they are our future, and this book offers us essential aid in understanding this important aspect of our evolving media environment. Drawing on the powerful tools made available via the media ecology intellectual tradition, combined with a multidisciplinary methodology, Hildebrand delivers an analysis that is both rigorous and readable, and above all insightful and provocative. Read it, and you will never look up at the sky in the same way again!” – Lance Strate, Fordham University, New York “Aerial Play is a most welcome guide to an emerging phenomenon. Drones are increasingly showing their presence, and Dr. Hildebrand offers no-nonsense and straightforward insights into one of the growing niches of drone practices: flying for fun! Written at the crossroads of Mobilities and Media studies, Aerial Play is a must-read for students, researchers within media, Mobilities, geography, and technology studies. Recreational drone flyers may indeed also find it useful.” – Ole B. Jensen, Aalborg University, Denmark “With a focus on its recreational and hobby use, Aerial Play widens our understanding of drones as a socio-technical system with a growing presence in society. This is a welcomed contribution not only to studies on drones, but also to our knowledge on human-machine interactions.” – Bruno Oliveira Martins, Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway |
TABLE OF CONTENTS Ch. 1 Introduction: Powerful Play Ch. 2 Understanding (with) the Drone Ch. 3 Situating Hobby Drone Practices Ch. 4 Communicating on the Fly Ch. 5 Moving and Not Moving up in the Air Ch. 6 Seeing Like a Consumer Drone Ch. 7 Dancing with My Drone Ch. 8 Conclusion: Open Skies? The book is based on the award-winning dissertation "Consumer Drones as Mobile Media: A Technographic Study of Seeing, Moving, and Being (With) Drones," Drexel University, 2019.
Doctoral Advisory Committee: Mimi Sheller, PhD, Drexel University (Chair and Graduate Advisor) Ernest Hakanen, PhD, Drexel University Brent Luvaas, PhD, Drexel University Lisa Parks, PhD, MIT Peter Adey, PhD, Royal Holloway University of London |