Drone affect: Folded points of view as a co-affection method for empathy and care

Abstract

Drone usage in fieldwork and participatory processes entails direct sensations that fold the pilot/planner and audience into one. Footage from drone filming entails direct kinesthetic and synesthetic effects that occur while one edits the film material, giving rise to affective responses. Through one experimental drone postproduction film, this article discusses how the interplay of vision, motion, and sound works as a set of gestures that comprise sensation as a (self- and co-) affection modus of immediation when one engages with moving images on-screen during drone filming, editing, and screening. The article builds upon Merleau-Ponty's film writings and Puig de la Bellacasa's touch/care perspectives. Specifically, it asks what constitutive aspects characterize the folding of the drone's/pilot's point of view (POV) in relation to the perceiver's POV during postediting, and to the conceiver's POV during subsequent viewings. The article's original contribution is to show how affective experiences are transposed as haptic touch via the same images and folded POVs. It also addresses a research methodological perspective on filmic mediations and written accounts. The article concludes by speculating about how the co-affective potential of the folding of POVs through drone imagery might inform fieldwork and participatory processes from perspectives of care and empathy.