Michael Richardson
Dr Michael Richardson is a Senior Research Fellow in Media at UNSW Sydney and author of Gestures of Testimony: Torture, Trauma and Affect in Literature. His transdisciplinary research investigates affect, power and violence in culture, technology and politics. He is currently working on a major project funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award on drones and witnessing in war and culture.
All essays by Michael Richardson
The Testimony of Drones
Drones are not simply observers of events, but active participants in their making. They move the air around them, react to the force of wind, decode signals and encode new ones, detect and respond to objects and bodies, capture worldly phenomena and transform it into data. How they make knowledge matters because the drone can act on what it knows. That action takes place along a continuum that extends from minor adjustments of position to the application of lethal force. It might hover in place, zoom in closer, even kill.