Digital Age Psychogeography: Drones, Smartphones & Rural Wanderings

Abstract

Contemporary GPS receivers embedded in mobile Smartphones combined with digital maps within social media applications, e.g. Facebook's check-in feature, are changing the ways that we view the world. Likewise, civilian drones with cameras are producing unprecedented views from above the earth. They are more than an aviation device or an UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) because they are now used by civilians who can remotely control cameras that rise above regional and urban environments. Civilian drones can also deliver almost anything for professional, ludic, public, political and commercial purposes. These technologies are redefining the meaning of mobile technology and traditional notions of location-based media and are aptly described in this paper as Opto-Loca mobile media. They are also boarding passes for a "Digital Age of Psychogeography" (Dowd 2013) in which notions of place and space are explored, drawing on earlier ideas of urban wandering, but from new mobile vantage points. They also prompt us to review issues of control over territory and place and explore self-organising concepts, as well as policy for commercial, private and public applications. The participants using mobile location applications and civilian drones range from journalists and artists to farmers, entrepreneurs, scientists and rural gazers as well as urban wanderers. They are mapping and sensing Australia in new ways, as they bypass skyscrapers, crops, suburban streets and regional towns. Their explorations are introducing new ideas for civic engagement as well as matters for regulation and deregulation. In addition, they are altering ideas about the functions of place, space and community and reconfiguring our ways of seeing the world in the early 21st century.