Thursday, December 19, 2013

Military Drones as Street Art

From:  The Atlantic Cities

COMMENT - As a technology, drones were born in death delivered from a sky which once stood for freedom and light.  A generation of people in the Middle East are now being raised to a reality which sees the sky as the harbinger of fear and lacerating and unexpected annihilation. 

Every individual in the chain of causality who profited in delivering this should be haunted by the reality their lack of conscience evoked. 

Military Drones as Street Art
Courtesy of James Bridle
Unless you live in a country where military drones in the sky are a terrifying fact of life – Pakistan, say, or Yemen – you might not know exactly what they look like. James Bridle, a writer and artist who lives in London, wants to change that.
Bridle's Drone Shadow Handbook [PDF] provides detailed instructions on how to sketch the outline of a drone - the imagined shadow of such an aircraft overhead – on a city street near you. The book, which I read about on Policy Mic, enables anyone to replicate one. It's an ongoing art project for Bridle, who wants to bring public awareness of drones to the citizens of the countries that launch them.

Drone shadow installation. Image courtesy of James Bridle/booktwo.org


The reaction to the drone shadows he has drawn on street in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and elsewhere has been revealing, Bridle writes in an email. "There has been a great and growing reaction from the public," he writes.  MORE

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