Subversive Submersives: the so-called ‘good drones’ of the Southern Ocean

Description

The Southern Ocean is typically encountered through reportage disseminating techno-utopian and depoliticised myths that do little to share the diverse ecologies, sensations, and imaginaries within (Elzinga, 2009). Such representations avoid the long history of industrial processes here, and the ocean is made to seem redundant in the co-constitution of human, nonhuman, and non-lively relationships across a rapidly urbanising planet. Countering this are new technologies expanding into remote spaces like autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and floating drone swarms. While robotics are often tied to institutions intent on maintaining power via surveillance technologies, Anna Jackman (2016, 3) reminds us “rebranded ‘good drones’”—including submersible robots used in oceanographic research—are positioned as instruments of safety and responsibility, operating in wild spaces outside of everyday life.

Extreme distance renders the Southern Ocean opaque but emerging technologies interconnect with urban and industrial processes at the scale of the planet, and operations can quickly intensify and jump scales (M. Arboleda, 2016). Indeed, underwater technologies allow for a permanent sub-surface expansion of observation, extraction, and accumulation. Around Antarctica, under-ice exploration pairs with animal-borne sensors and remote bio-logging, with an eye towards commercial application. Meanwhile, a ‘smart ocean’ generates complex legal, ecological, and moral questions; and signals escalation of potentially destructive processes within environments that sustain populations on dry land. This paper will examine a “disarticulated sensing apparatus” (Andrejevic & Burdon, 2015: 25)—that is, subsurface data relayed to global monitoring technologies—and ask what contribution can be made to understanding everyday life through extending into an ocean world encountered by nonhuman and (increasingly enlivened) drone bodies?

Period	31 Aug 2021 → 10 Sept 2021
Held at	Royal Geographical Society with IBG, United Kingdom
Degree of Recognition	International