[Air-L] New Book – Aerial Play: Drone Medium, Mobility, Communication, and Culture

[Julia H.]

Dear colleagues,

This recent book publication might be of interest to some:

Aerial Play: Drone Medium, Mobility, Communication, and Culture
Julia M. Hildebrand, hildebjm at eckerd.edu
Palgrave Macmillan (Geographies of Media Series)

To access the ebook via SpringerLink:
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-16-2195-6

To purchase a copy: https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9789811621949
(for 20% off, use token haxFj8k2bpjyMQE at checkout until Aug 17)

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Aerial Play explores recreational uses of consumer drones from the lenses
of media ecology, mobile communication, mobilities research, and science
and technology studies. The provocative ethnography discusses camera drones
as mobile media for meaningful play. It thus widens perspectives onto the
flying camera as foremost unmanned aircraft, spying tool, or dangerous toy
towards a more comprehensive understanding of its potentials.

How should we situate drone practices in recreational spaces? What ways of
seeing, moving, and being do hobby drones open up? Across chapters about
drone geography, communication, mobility, visuality, and human-machine
relations, Aerial Play introduces novel frameworks for drone affordances,
such as communication on the fly, disembodied mobilities, auratic vertical
play, and drone-mindedness.

In the mobile companionship with her own drone, Hildebrand contributes an
innovative “auto-technographic” method for the self-reflective study of
media and mobility. Ultimately, her grounded and aerial fieldwork
illuminates new technological, mobile, visual, and social relations in
everyday spaces.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Ch. 1 Introduction: Powerful Play

Ch. 2 Understanding (with) the Drone

Ch. 3 Situating Hobby Drone Practices

Ch. 4 Communicating on the Fly

Ch. 5 Moving and Not Moving up in the Air

Ch. 6 Seeing Like a Consumer Drone

Ch. 7 Dancing with My Drone

Ch. 8 Conclusion: Open Skies?

ENDORSEMENTS:

“In a short amount of time, drones have become a ubiquitous technology. And
while scholarly attention has been focused on commercial and military
contexts, the recreational drone has been relatively overlooked. That is,
until Aerial Play: Drone Medium, Mobility, Communication and Culture.
Aerial Play addresses some of the complex debates around quotidian
surveillance and mundane mobilities and how these practices recalibrate how
we understand media ecology, mobile communication, mobilities research, and
science and technology studies. Traversing themes such as drone geography,
communication, mobility and new visualities, Aerial Play also explores how
drones can help us reinvent our digital methods. Hildebrand’s playful and
yet robust approach to drones encourages us to rethink the paradigm between
media and mobility.”

– Larissa Hjorth, RMIT University, Australia

“In Aerial Play, Julia M. Hildebrand provides a serious, scholarly, and
accessible study of a highly significant new medium that is altering the
world that we live in, and the way that we view ourselves. Drones are not
simply toys, they are our future, and this book offers us essential aid in
understanding this important aspect of our evolving media environment.
Drawing on the powerful tools made available via the media ecology
intellectual tradition, combined with a multidisciplinary methodology,
Hildebrand delivers an analysis that is both rigorous and readable, and
above all insightful and provocative. Read it, and you will never look up
at the sky in the same way again!”

– Lance Strate, Fordham University, USA

“Dr. Hildebrand offers no-nonsense and straightforward insights into one of
the growing niches of drone practices: flying for fun! Written at the
crossroads of mobilities and media studies, Aerial Play is a must-read for
students, researchers within media, mobilities, geography, and technology
studies. Recreational drone flyers may indeed also find it useful.”

– Ole B. Jensen, Aalborg University, Denmark