Shifting the pattern: lateral thinking and machine vision

Abstract

ABSTRACT Pattern recognition and machine vision are two defining features of a drone’s sensor. The following essay sets out to examine these features by combining machinic and artistic frameworks for understanding patterns. Its goal is to counter the invisibility and inaccessibility of machine vision – especially where it concerns the military use of drones – by forming constellations around the drone that seem unlikely at first. They include modernist instances such as Paul Klee’s Grid Dancer and Siegfried Kracauer’s writings on the mass ornament, which are paired with contemporary artworks by Julién Prévieux and Clemens von Wedemeyer. These pairings are the result of a methodology that harks back to Edward de Bono’s concept of lateral thinking, which calls for a repatterning by moving sideways and deviating from the standard approach. In this case, its goal is to review subject formations in the drone age, as they are scrutinized in the pattern of life analyses that shift the focus from identity to action and from individual bodies to dividual connections. Although these shifts may be most explicit in the case of war, they similarly apply to commerce and entertainment, thus suggesting the drone as a pattern made out of elements that are central to “our” time.