Book Announcement: Aerial Play
Drone Medium, Mobility, Communication, and Culture
Published in Palgrave Macmillan's Geographies of Media Series
Winner of the prestigious Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology 2024.
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, Aerial Play 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 an innovative “auto-technographic” method for the self-reflective study of media and mobility. Ultimately, her grounded and aerial fieldwork illuminates new technological, mobile, visual, and social relations in everyday spaces.
Related Drone Studies
Articles:
Book Chapters:
- Hildebrand, J. M. & Sodero S. (2021). "Pandemic Drones: Promises and Perils." Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies, 11(1), 148–158.
- Hildebrand, J. M. (2020). “Drone-topia as Method.” Mobilities, 15(1), 25–38.
- Hildebrand, J. M. (2019). “Consumer Drones and Communication on the Fly.” Mobile Media & Communication , 7(3), 395–411.
- Hildebrand, J. M. (2018). “Situating Hobby Drone Practices.” Digital Culture & Society, 3(2), 207–218.
Book Chapters:
- Hildebrand, J. M. (2024). “The Tourist Drone: Commercial Visions and Practical Considerations.” In: Serafinelli, E. (Ed.), Drones in Society: A New Visual Aesthetic (p. 161–173). Palgrave Macmillan.
- Hildebrand, J. M. (2020). "Drone Mobilities and Auto-Technography." In: Büscher, M., Freudendal-Pedersen, M., Kesselring, S., Grauslund, N.(Eds.), Handbook of Research Methods and Applications for Mobilities (pp. 92–101). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
- Hildebrand, J. M. (2018). “Over-Extended Media: Hashtag Hatred and Domestic Drones.” In: Cirucci, A. & Vacker, B. (Eds.). Black Mirror and Critical Media Studies (pp. 171–183). Lexington Books.
Media and Mobilities Research
Articles:
Book Chapters:
- Hildebrand, J. M. (2023). "High Heels as Mobile Media: (Im)mobilities and Feminist Ecologies." Explorations in Media Ecology, 22:4, 381–397.
- Zeffiro, A., Hildebrand, J. M., Frith, J., Hjorth, L., McGrane, C., Weiss, A. S., & Goggin, G. (2020). Locative-Media Ethics: A Call for Protocols to Guide Interactions of People, Place, and Technologies. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 97(1), 13–29.
- Hildebrand, J. M. (2019). “On Self-Driving Cars as a Technological Sublime.” Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 23(2), 153–173.
- Hildebrand, J. M. (2018). “Modal Media: Connecting Media Ecology and Mobilities Research.” Media, Culture & Society, 40(3), 348–364.
- Hildebrand, J. M. & Sheller, M. (2018). “Media Ecologies of Autonomous Automobility: Gendered and Racial Dimensions of Future Concept Cars.” Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies, 8(1), 64–85.
Book Chapters:
- Hildebrand, J. M. & Sheller, M. (2020). “Mobile LIDAR Mediality as Artistic Anti-Environment.” In: Hjorth, L., de Souza e Silva, A., & Lanson, K. (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media Art (pp. 460–481). London: Routledge.
- Hildebrand, J. M. (2019). “Discovering the @World by #Flashpacking.” In: Vacker, B. (Ed.), Media Environments: Using Movies and Texts to Critique Media and Society (pp. 130–135). 3rd Edition. Cognella.
- Hildebrand, J. M. (2017). “Visually Distant and Virtually Close: Public and Private Spaces in the Archives de la Planète (1909–1931) and Life in a Day (2011).” In: Timan, T., Koops, B-J. and Newell, B (Eds.). Privacy in Public Spaces: Conceptual and Regulatory Challenges. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Invited Special Issue of Explorations in Media Ecology
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“Gender and Media Ecology” Guest Editors: Julia M. Hildebrand (Eckerd College) & Julia C. Richmond (Rowan University) Special Issue Introduction: Hildebrand, J. M. and Richmond, J. C. (2021). "Gender and media ecology: An invited special issue." Explorations in Media Ecology, 20:2: 119–29. |
Media Ecology: Theory and Art
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Articles:
Textbook Chapters:
Creative Work:
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Poster for Media(s)cene: A Mixed-Media Installation exhibited at the University of Toronto, 2019 (Image: Barry Vacker).
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Other Writing
- Sodero, S. & Hildebrand, J. M. (2017). “Drone-topia? A mobile utopia experiment.” Blog post.
- Batteau, A., Sheller, M., Zielinski, S., Anand Doshi, K., Hildebrand, J. M., Mason, D.J., Roti, M., & Walsh, S. (2016). The Imaginary of Rail Transport and Mobility in the United States: Final Report. Technical Report. Study sponsored by the Mobile Lives Forum, France.
