A Bee with an Electronic Brain: Drone Flights in Cold War America

Records of drone flights during the Cold War include photographs, engineering documents, commercial pamphlets, and newspaper articles. This series of images photographed pieces of documentation and re-created scenes to consider the anachronism of Cold War target drones in the midst of contemporary “unmanned” warfare. The five triptychs and accompanying essay ask how drone technologies, and the humans who produce and operate them, map onto visible and invisible domestic and international spaces and with what consequences? The pieces underscore the persistence of secrecy and the interplay between soldier, enemy and target, even as the images undo current notions of drone aircraft.