What if Drones Stopped Going to War and Started Taking Selfies?

If a drone had the day off, what would it do? That’s fun to imagine, and if they’re anything like us, they’d probably snap some selfies while doing it. That’s the fate imagined by IOCOSE, a European art group. Their series In Times of Peace imagines a utopian society where drones are no longer needed for surveillance or war, and are instead free to roam about unencumbered. Luckily, IOCOSE already had a drone on hand to help actualize their idea—a Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 the group bought for one of their members as a wedding gift.

If a drone had the day off, what would it do? It's fun to imagine, and if they're anything like us, they'd probably snap some selfies while doing it. That's the fate imagined by IOCOSE, a European art group. Their series In Times of Peace envisions a utopian society where drones are no longer needed for surveillance or war, and are instead free to roam about unencumbered. Luckily, IOCOSE already had a drone on hand to help actualize their idea---a Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 the group bought for one of their members as a wedding gift.

“Discourses around drones seem to replicate a strongly instrumental perspective, where drones are relevant as long as they are 'used' for something---killing terrorists, surveilling citizens, delivering pizzas and so on,” said IOCOSE member Paolo Ruffino. “We thought, what would drones do if they were not used by humans? How would they spend their free time?”

The answer, they determined, was pretty banal. Like the humans they serve, the autonomous drones of the artists’ imaginations likely would succumb to the common pastimes of modern life, and document them with the inevitable selfie. And so IOCOSE’s drone snaps selfies at the gym, in the bathroom, and around the house. But the drone wasn’t always the best photographer, as unexpected movements made capturing images with the built-in camera difficult. In these photos, the drone is curious and self-indulgent, like a precocious child or belligerent pigeon.

Most drones aren't so amiable as those imagined by the artists, but they are very much in the public consciousness. From Amazon promising drone deliveries to the FAA trying to figure out just how to regulate them, 2014 was a big year for drones. IOCOSE considers developments in the drone world “quite predictable”---“Bombing villages, delivering parcels, taking pictures---drones have been doing the same things for a while now,” Ruffino said.

The merits of such uses, and drones in general, are widely debated. But the artists didn’t want to weigh in on whether drones, and the things they do, are good or bad. Instead, they simply wanted to leave the drone to a natural life and document it.

“We are not concerned with giving moralistic perspectives, or offering solutions or ‘better’ models for understanding ourselves and the world around us,” Ruffino said. “We would rather offer alternative views on the ways in which we tend to make sense of our relationship with technology and media, and on the ideas circulating around the future and the present we currently live in.”