A Drone Opera

The electrifying experience of drones underscores this ambitious contemporary opera. Featuring a number of purpose-built drones, laser set design and transcendent vocals, A Drone Opera introduces audiences to the sublimely beautiful, visceral and terrifying reality of flying robots. While drones are the latest controversial addition to arsenals in military-civilian conflicts, they are also increasingly valuable tools in the frontline of emergency search, rescue and relief, in wildlife conservation and in agriculture. Enthusiastically taken up by backyard pilots, they have brought a new language to film, with aerial cinema. Yet their place in society" like that of many new technologies" is perceived through a prism of terror, disbelief, wonder and utopian fantasy. Recalling the myth of Icarus, A Drone Opera charts the wonder and potential of a magical new technology, the attendant moral panic and the hubris that sabotages the initial promise. Drawing on the secretive subculture of DIY drone-makers, researchers and hackers, A Drone Opera explores the role of drone technology and its complex and contested status in public life. Western military forces have used drones (a.k.a. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles/UAVs) to deliver thousands of strikes and targeted assassinations in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan, extending state power beyond the point where citizens will sanction human deployment. At this juncture it is crucial to consider our relationship to UAVs and how they are used in our name. While the performance implies a critique of current political expediency, it is essentially optimistic: these amazing machines are capable of so much more than killing. To this end, A Drone Opera makes manifest the relationship between technology, violence, politics and spectacle in an opera for our time.