DRONE-2000

> DETAILED PRESENTATION OF THE PROJECT
> PRESS MATERIAL

* HISTORICAL CONTEXT *
Drone-2000 is a series of critical productions that echo the recent Western attraction for this seemingly playful technology, birthed through both military research and scale modeling. For nearly ten years, the use of drones has spread across the fields of hacking, cinema, gaming and the art world. They are highly promoted by the very companies that produce them as well as the military-industrial complex, and through product placement in the gaming industry and the science-­fiction fantasies inherited from the 20th century.

* PURPOSE OF THE PROJECT *
Drone-2000 is a performance where autonomous systems, controlled by precarious algorithms, coexist with an audience. Their latent and dysfunctional presence is a tangible threat. Drone-2000 projects us into a dystopian situation, thus illustrating the military origins of these entertaining objects as well as their recent use by police forces. Here, trusting the autonomy of the machine is not only a discursive concept but a true experience shared with the audience, triggering visceral and psychological reactions, in the face of symbolic and real danger.

* PERFORMANCE STRUCTURE *
The concept of the performance is structured around different civil IT, electronic, and manual attacks. Each attack is initially conceived to protect oneself against the current intrusion and likely future invasion of these not-always-well-intentioned engines. The chosen attacks seek to deviate, block, or blind these cybernetic machines. All this takes place both in an empirical and dysfunctional manner, enhanced by the live and amplified sound of rotors.

* LIVE PERFORMANCE VERSION *
This project takes on a hybrid form of presentation that voluntarily provokes a discomfort between the social codes of a concert setting, a demonstration, a tutorial, and the physical experience of living with autonomous flying machines. For the performance version, the drones are equipped with four light spy-microphones. Their erratic choreography become the score of a live composition, an extreme sound amplification of the engines’ movements.

* EXHIBITION VERSION (IN PROGRESS) *
A second series of attacks, in the form of a video piece, is currently being produced. It seeks to establish a critique through absurdity, borrowing equally from technophilic ideas as from technoskeptic ones:

Nicolas Maigret exposes the internal workings of media, through an exploration of their dysfunctions, limitations or failure thresholds which he develops sensory and immersive audio visual experiences. As a curator, he initiated the http://disnovation.net research, a critique of the innovation propaganda. He teaches at Parsons Paris and cofounded the Art of Failure collective in 2006.
His work has been presented in international exhibitions and festivals: Transmediale (Berlin) - Museum of Art and Design (New York) - File (Sao Paulo) - 30th Chaos Communication Congress (Hamburg) - Palais de Tokyo (Paris) - Elektra (Montréal) - NWFF (Seattle) - SAIC (Chicago) - China Museum of Digital Arts (Beijing) - The Pirate Bay 10th Anniversary (Stockholm) - Eastern Bloc (Montreal)…

Conception: Nicolas Maigret - 2014-2015
Drone modification + development: Arthur Heist, Grégoire Lauvin
Production: Eastern Bloc (Montréal), M2F Créations

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