zaumnik / humming

Explore Flickr Images Uploaded at Sites of US Military Drone Strikes

#Humming

A Processing sketch that pulls random images uploaded to Flickr at the exact locations of all known US Military drone strikes, as documented by Dronestre.am. As one follows through each strike and its correlating random image, the sound of a drone (pulled from a random YouTube video in Yemen) progressively increases in volume.

Demo video: https://vimeo.com/96158941

The basis of the project stems from the Living Under Drones Report of 2012, written by the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic of Stanford Law School and the Global Justice Clinic of the NYU School of Law.

One aspect of the report is the mental health issues caused by the sounds of drones regularly flying over head:

Community members, mental health professionals, and journalists interviewed for this report described how the constant presence of US drones overhead leads to substantial levels of fear and stress in the civilian communities below.One man described the reaction to the sound of the drones as “a wave of terror” coming over the community. “Children, grown-up people, women, they are terrified. . . . They scream in terror.” Interviewees described the experience of living under constant surveillance as harrowing. In the words of one interviewee: “God knows whether they’ll strike us again or not. But they’re always surveying us, they’re always over us, and you never know when they’re going to strike and attack.