Abstract
Abstract: This article examines how performance represents, reflects on, and reimagines the function of technology in drone culture. From a pharmaco-phenomenological angle, I analyze drone art practices, focusing on how drone performances invite audiences to feel/make their way through a networked reality. I highlight human tension, vulnerability, and precarity in their digital thrownness in conditions perceived as alien or alienating, yet not completely foreign or nonhuman. Featuring Ars Electronica Futurelab’s 100 Drones , Julian Hetzel’s The Automated Sniper , Laura Poitras’s Bed Down Location , and Random International’s Zoological , I investigate drones as pharmaka in practices where these technologies potentially antagonize, elevate, or even outperform their human counterparts. It is through this pharmacological functionality of drones that this article seeks to understand how to be human in drone culture.