REGROWTH + DRONE STAR

Regrowth Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm 2016

NEWS

I am very happy to report that my entry Where There's Life There's... is a finalist in the $15,000 Redland Art Award. This award is biennial. You can read more about it and see the list of finalists etc HERE I shall keep you up to date - winner announced 14 October. 

And, at the bottom of this post I have news about the Tattersall's Landscape Art Prize. 

REGROWTH + DRONE STAR

As you can see I am still fixated on the figure of the drone - the drone in the landscape to be more precise. Both Regrowth and Drone Star  depict a drone with emanating signals that create a star-like appearance. These signals are representative of a drone's sensors which receive and transmit data. 

In Regrowth the drone's signals contrast with the emanating branches of the tree-of-life.  This age-old transcultural/religious symbol is the drone's target - for data and perhaps attack. The red box - kill box- around the lone tree indicates that it is a target. Yet, the tree defies the intrusion by sending down new roots. In my mind it acts subversively, but then again, having seen Australian bush regrowth, I know that where and when it can, life re-emerges. 

Drone Star plays with the viewer's sense of orientation. Are you above the drone looking down onto the ground or are you below the drone looking up to a sky. In either case the drone's signals have taken over, hijacked even, the landscape - skyscape. The vibrant colours act as a kind of camouflage sending a message of benign, or even fun, intent. But, is this really the case? 

As regular readers know, I have a delight in playing with perspective and orientation. The drone is giving me ample inspiration in so many ways. 

Here are links to some more of my recent DRONE paintings:

DRONESCAPES

DRONE EXHAUST 

STRATEGIC LANDSCAPE - DRONED

DATA DATA - SKY OF EYES

DRONE LIFE SHADOW PLAY

Drone Star Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm 2016

TATTERSALLS'S LANDSCAPE ART AWARD UPDATE

And, here's the news on the Tattersall's $30,000 Landscape Art Prize. The winner was announced on Wednesday last week. AND, congratulations to Ann Thomson for her win with Breakwater. Highly Commended to Melissa Egan and Guy Warren, Commended to Margaret Loy Pula and Members' Choice Award to Michael McWilliams. The exhibition will continue from 12 September to 23 September at the Riverside Centre, 123 Eagle St, Brisbane. 

My entry Privileged Landscape? [below] received some great comments from people at the opening. 

 Privileged Landscape oil on linen 80 x 140 cm 2015

DATA DATA - SKY OF EYES

Data Data Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm 2016

This painting was inspired by an article written by media theorist Mark Andrejevic and law academic Mark Burden. The article "Defining The Sensor Society "  appeared in Television and New Media (2014). Apart from being a fascinating article that examines the increased use of sensor devices  and privacy considerations resulting from always-on surveillance, monitoring etc, there are a few phrases and sentences that have stimulated images in my head. 

Data Data is one of these images. And, the sentence that struck a visual chord, resulting in this painting, is "For drones, the signal-saturated sky is a sea of electromagnetically stored data that can be swooped up, processed, refined, and perhaps put to use."  [p.5] What a sentence! 

So, with Data Data I have played with the idea of "swooped up" data capture by a drone.  I have painted wave-like electromagnetic transmissions which seem to flow into some kind of storage system. The transmissions can also flow out from here, if needed. As the words "perhaps put to use" indicate, the data may not be useful, but it's collected anyway. Why? Because in the future it might be useful! Patterns of behaviour, for example, may not flag attention until other data signals some kind of correlation. 

However, "put to use" has serious implications when it is a drone that may be the instrument that wields actions as a result of data that is identified as useful. 

The painting below Sky of Eyes takes the idea of surveillance and monitoring into an imagined place where the sky is now inhabited - by eyes.  The drone is considered as an always-on unblinking eye. This has nothing to do with a human's vision capabilities. And, here I take the word 'vision' to mean not only sight of eyeball and pupil, but also imaginary vision. For me a drone's capacities are not about 'vision' but more about scoping. This links with a drone's other significant task - to target!

Both paintings continue my quest to re-consider ideas of landscape, to untether it from earth-bound horizons in order to reveal un-traversed perspectives that may provide insights into the future and humanity's place in it - perhaps....

Sky of Eyes Gouache on paper 19 x 26.5 cm 2016

Cheers,

Kathryn

www.kathrynbrimblecombe-fox.com 

DRONE LIFE SHADOW PLAY

 Drone Life Shadow Play Gouache on paper 30 x 42 cm 2016

MEDIA THEORY

Media theorists have appropriated the figure of the drone to describe a process of "droning" - of life!* It is a way of describing the interactivity between the multitude of sensors we, either knowingly or not, engage with each day, and the processes of data collection, monitoring, data mining and usage. It's not really just about collecting content, but also monitoring patterns of behaviour, preferences and so on. This data may be used by advertisers, policy makers, app developers and others to target individuals or groups of people with offerings that run a gamut of possibilities.  However, correlations between and amongst collected data may not be identified as useful until some time in the future. The future identifiers of these correlations may not be working for advertisers or policy makers, but possibly more interrogative, covert or malign entities. 

MILITARISED DRONE

So where does the actual militarised unmanned air vehicle or drone fit in? It's all about its data collection and surveillance capabilities, undertaken by remote pilots and remote sensor analysts. These remote operated activities can lead to targeting and attack decisions - albeit a different kind of targeting to that employed by advertisers and policy makers!.

The military drone acts as a transmitter, receiver and collector of information. This information can come from its own cameras, or from 'sensored' data gathered from mobile phones, GPS systems, and other devices that help tract patterns of behaviour, as well as other more concrete types of information. The major task is surveillance in order to identify, monitor and nominate individuals or groups whose online, physical or other behaviours attract attention for being aberrant or potentially so. In the military or counter-insurgency sphere a drone's sensor mode can turn very quickly into killing mode with the deployment of Hellfire or guided missiles. 

* Associate Professor Mark Andrejevic, from Pomona College, USA is someone who writes compellingly about what he calls the "droning of experience". In fact he has written an article called The Droning of Experience  published in Fibre Culture Journal. I urge you to read it. 

Droned Landscape Gouche on paper 30 x 42 cm 2016

PAINTINGS
So, my paintings Drone Life Shadow Play and Droned Landscape are my imaginings of droning experiences! Rather than allude to a droning sense, I have painted drones - Reapers actually. 

Drone Life Shadow Play - no matter where we are or what we are doing there is a likelihood that we are transmitting data - when we make a phone call, walk into a large shopping centre, drive through a toll way, buy something with a card, use a computer, drive our cars and so on. 

I imagine shadows dancing around us...shadows we cannot see, shadows from things we cannot see, actions we are taking that are unconscious yet prevail as tracks to be brought to light, possibly in a far distant future. I imagine the collected data, stored in huge servers housed in massive buildings, like its an array of captured shadows - shadows caught before they could even be cast. Yet, the data is not like a soul or memory, or even a story. In a way it masquerades as a shadow that could be a door to a dark black abyss. Now there's a 'happy' thought!

In my painting the yellow drone casts a shadow. The yellow tree-of-life casts one too. One shadow looks like an abyss - the other does not.

Droned Landscape - I imagine the landscape covered with sensors and targets. It's like a landscape overlay that obscures where the horizon and sky meet. Note the tree-of-life standing as a beacon, perhaps a guiding signpost - if we bother to look up from our various devices and see. 

Cheers,
Kathryn
www.kathrynbrimblecombe-fox.com