Beyond drone vision: the embodied telepresence of first-person-view drone flight

Abstract

Drones, no matter whether military or civilian, have been widely theorized as a media technology. An important notion for conceptualizing the particular scopic regimes of drones has been “drone vision.” Recently, some scholars have suggested to shift the attention toward the “more-than-optical”, “more-than-visual” or “synesthetic” characteristics of drones. Drawing on a (post-)phenomenological reading of First Person View (FPV) drone flight, this article asks, firstly, how the “more-than” component in the notion “more-than-optical” emerges in the embodied actions and perceptions of amateur drone users, and secondly, how these experiences might be conceptualized. As a key concept for my reflection, I take up the notion of telepresence, which emerged in the discourse on remote control and teleoperation technologies and finally found its way as an artistic strategy and popular motif into our contemporary socio-technical imaginaries. This article suggests first steps toward an empirical and theoretical exploration of the heterogeneous technogene sensations of drones.