Game of Drones

Drones are unmanned flying objects, whose size is as different as their appearance and their use. They are employed for various civil purposes, such as enabling the access to places that would otherwise be difficult to access, for border control, surveillance, data collection as well as in agriculture and the service sector. They provide artists, photographers, and filmmakers with impressive footage and have revolutionized the aesthetics of contemporary imagery.

However, drones are also considered to be the most important war technology since the invention of the atom bomb. As of yet, drones are not autonomously operating systems, but combined with artificial intelligence, they could become errie weapons. Turning them into learning and autonomously acting machines also raises ethical questions.

This publication brings together the contents from the exhibition Game of Drones. Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and a conference on the subject in the Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen, which analyzes different aspects of historical, current, and future drone technology in more depth. Socially relevant questions are dealt with based on historical technological exhibits and selected works by international artists, who critically reflect on drone technology in many different ways.

Today's drones are the further development of unmanned balloons, remotely guided weapons, and model airplanes. Taking this historical starting point, the publication concerns itself with the use of drones and their hybrid function as toys, war technology, and an economic factor. As a technology that unifies absolute oppositions, its contradictory nature is demonstrated in all its facets: from a surveillance device to an instrument for resistance and protest, from an animated object in the animistic sense to their use in strategic warfare. The publication also examines future developments, such as questions on transhuman consciousness and artificial intelligence.