Speculative Visions: Drones, Digital Art, and Ecological Concerns

This chapter examines two drone art projects, Waveform and Landform, which convert visual information from aerial views of natural landscapes into a form of poetry. These speculative projects are intended to raise questions concerning the nature and meaning of sensing and knowing the world through drone technology. Both Waveform and Landform explore the value of speculative digital art as a response to the harms precipitated by digital systems, infrastructures, and economies on the Earthly environment—not as a way of undoing the damage, but to emphasise all the more sharply the very frictions, breakdowns, and aporia that result from it.