chezweitz museal and urban scenography

Game of Drones. Of unmanned flying objects

Game of Drones. Of unmanned flying objects

Zeppelin Museum, Friedrichshafen
From 7 June to 3 November 2019

Small, whirring fly­ing objects high above us, seem­ing­ly eerie when spot­ted, are con­stant­ly tak­ing pic­tures of the Earth­’s sur­face – use­ful, but also dan­ger­ous. A excit­ing exhi­bi­tion in Friedrichshafen attempts to bridge the gap between crit­i­cal artis­tic posi­tions and a fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry of tech­nol­o­gy. The aes­thet­ics of drone images guide both the devel­op­ment of the spa­tial con­cept and the graph­ics of this exhi­bi­tion. Drone images are simul­ta­ne­ous­ly close and dis­tant; they blur in motion, are over­laid with grids, and are often cou­pled with ther­mal imag­ing sen­sors, trans­lat­ing topogra­phies or peo­ple into fields of col­or. For the scenog­ra­phy, we iso­lat­ed and trans­formed the pix­el as the small­est iden­ti­fi­able piece of image information. 

Vis­i­tors enter the exhi­bi­tion space, which resem­bles a ther­mal imag­ing cam­era image and makes a blurred state­ment about dimen­sion, space, and dis­tance. Embed­ded with­in this space are both the diverse works of the artists and var­i­ous exhibits from the tech­no­log­i­cal his­to­ry of drones. The pix­els form pedestals, dis­play cas­es, as well as horn nich­es and seat­ing plat­forms, and become walk-in booths. The entire back­ground is an abstract blue, describ­ing the depth of infi­nite (air)space. The con­trast­ing red, yel­low, and pink pix­els resem­ble polar fields to be explored, only becom­ing inter­pretable upon approach. Fur­ther­more, the graph­ic is char­ac­ter­ized not only by pix­els and glitch­es, but also by the super­im­posed grids. Grids, dis­tance indi­ca­tors, and crosshairs enrich the images and trans­form con­ven­tion­al cam­eras into impor­tant research instru­ments, but also into dan­ger­ous weapons. This ambiva­lence of the drones is also intend­ed, through the scenog­ra­phy, to evoke a feel­ing of ambiva­lence, a spe­cial blend of fas­ci­na­tion and thrill in vis­i­tors. Are we observers, or are we being observed?

Scenography
chezweitz GmbH, museale und urbane Szenografie, Berlin
Dr. Sonja Beeck, Detlef Weitz, Christina Antonelli
Exhibition graphics
chezweitz GmbH, Anja Rausch
Director Zeppelin Museum
Dr. Claudia Emmert
Curators
Sabine Mücke, Ina Neddermeyer
Exhibition construction
Baur GmbH, Friedrichshafen
Graphic production
ZINSER Siebdruck GmbH, Friedrichshafen
Media production
Eidotech GmbH, Berlin
Photos
Markus Tretter/Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen