SALON

Sunday, Feb 10, 2013 10:00 PM UTC

Art world speaks out against drones

Artists are following in local government's footsteps by fighting drone surveillance

By

Topics: Hyperallergic, Art, Drones, National security, Law enforcement, Surveillance, artists, , ,

Art world speaks out against drones (Credit: Wikimedia)
This article originally appeared on Hyperallergic.

Ever since the federal government announced plans to expand its use of drones for domestic surveillance, concerns have been growing over what that will mean, particularly for people’s right to privacy. It seemed like only a matter of time, then, before smaller local governments started passing laws to try and grapple with the issue. On Monday, Charlottesville, Va., became the first city to pass an anti-drone resolution.
Hyperallergic

The legislation “calls on the United States Congress and the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia to adopt legislation prohibiting information obtained from the domestic use of drones from being introduced into a Federal or State court” and “pledges to abstain from similar uses with city-owned, leased or borrowed drones,” according to US News and World Report. The resolution also expresses support for a statewide two-year moratorium on drones that’s being debated.

And Virginia isn’t the only state taking action: Maine, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Montana, and Florida all have drone-regulation bills in the works, according to the ACLU blog.

Of course, the big question that hovers over all of these bills and resolutions is whether they will make any difference. Can words on paper in state and city legislatures stop the federal government from essentially doing what it wants with unmanned aerial vehicles (like killing an American citizen without trial)?

That’s the same question on the mind of AJ Kohn, a law student who has dreamed up a project to try and stop drones through architecture. Kohn recently blogged about the project, an anti-drone place called Shura City, at Chapati Mystery, where he wrote about the failure of the law in the face of drones:

The idea for my final project, an architectural defense against drone warfare, came from the realization that law had no response to drone warfare. My own understanding of the ongoing [War on Terror pseudonym] as a civil rights issue is irrelevant; we only learn civil rights as a historical happening, not a current struggle. But architecture has a proud anti-legal tradition. Architecture is a way to protect people when law chooses not to.

A rendering of AJ Kohn's anti-drone Shura City (image via scribd.com)

A rendering of AJ Kohn’s anti-drone Shura City (image via scribd.com)

Kohn is not an architecture student, and his proposal is rough, at best. He lays out the details of it in a nine-page report: The structure involves a closed circuit of buildings so that “drones targeting individuals will not be able to select and detect the individuals they desire once they enter the city”; windows with embedded QR codes that “can act as guard dogs, letting the machines outside know that they are not welcome and should fear coming closer”; and a roof that offers climate control, plus badgirs, to mess with drones’ use of heat sensors for identification.

It all sounds a bit — well, hodgepodge and tenuous. Questions abound, like how feasible the structure is, how much it would cost to fabricate, would people would actually want to live in it, and the biggie — would it would actually work? At the same time, though, it’s also intriguing and inspiring. Artists have been confronting and grappling with the increasingly widespread use of drones for some time now, from Adam Harvey’s anti-drone clothing to James Bridle’s numerous projects. While one might be tempted to write off these projects as either wishful thinking or ineffective, I can’t help but welcome their creativity and their engagement with the world (rather than the art world). As with the anti-drone bills being debated in the state legislatures, the real effect of any of these projects is unknown, perhaps even negligible — but at least people are starting to fight back, and in the process, offering some encouragement and hope.

More Jillian Steinhauer.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 2 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

Salon is proud to feature content from Hyperallergic, a forum for serious, playful and radical thinking about art in the world today.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Journalists file suit against Manning's trial secrecy: Plaintiffs including Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange demand press, public access to trial and documents
169 points170 points | comment
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
153 points154 points | 72 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
148 points149 points | 98 comments
vote
Report: Nearly a quarter of Americans struggle to afford food
141 points142 points | 13 comments
vote
Ted Cruz against the world - How the Junior Senator is igniting the GOP civil war
81 points82 points | 21 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations