Unruly vision, synesthetic space: drone music videos

In recent years, there has been an increase in using drones outfitted with cameras and unusual lenses to produce music videos. Analyzing Flatbush Zombies featuring Trash Talk’s video “97.92,” this article outlines the contours of this synesthetic space and its position within audiovisual culture. Drone technologies inscribe themselves into the long history of other visual (and sonic) technologies used to expand cinematic forms of expression, and this article shows how drone music videos challenge the conventional spatial order of military and policing drones. This challenge comes in the form of a synesthetic space that produces different forms of embodiment than was previously available to audiovisual media. What drone music videos show is that esthetic and artistic practices may be used to resist the control conventionally articulated by military and policing drones and instead produce a different sensory formation.