Drones in Society

Elisa Serafinelli is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Media and Communication at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. While working at the University of Sheffield (2016-2022), she was awarded a British Academy/Leverhulme small grant and an AHRC Leadership Fellowship for studying drones in society and visual culture to enrich the current scholarship on new visual technologies.

1. Introduction.- Part I Drones in cinema, films, and storytelling.- 2. Controlling Drones in Contemporary Science Fiction.- 3. Threat Trajectories: Cinema, FPV Drones, and Pandemic Anxiety.- 4. Monstrous Mobilities and Predatory Perspectives: Drone Shots and the Gaze of Monsters.- Part II Drones, data, sensing and mapping.- 5 Drone sensing in emergency: Visuals, volumes and vocabularies.- 6. Thermal Aesthetics. Beyond Visuality in Drone Technology.- 7. Global South Dronification: Mapping Drone Socio-Technical Networks in Córdoba (Argentina).- Part III Drone art and creative practices.- 8. Imaginational Metaveillance, Creative Painting Practice, and the Airborne Drone: A Visual Essay.- 9. Speculative Visions-Drones, Digital Art, and Ecological Concerns.- 10. Romancing the Drone: The Vertical Imagination in Indian Wedding Photography.- Part IV Drone Practices: Activism, conflicts, and general uses.- 11. Consumer Drone Warfare: Practices, Aesthetics and Discourses of Consumer Drones in the Russo-Ukrainian War.- 12. The Tourist Drone: Commercial Visions and Practical Considerations.- 13. COMPLEX: A visual index of the Immigrant detention industry.- 14. Concluding Remarks.