Intersecting Visualizations: Aerostat Views Over Afghanistan

• In Event: Seeing through New Eyes: Science, Truth and Technologies of Visualization - I

Abstract

Aerostats are tethered blimps replete with imaging devices and sensors. They have become a characteristic object in landscapes of surveillance – from the skies above the U.S. land borders with Mexico and Canada, to those above military bases in Afghanistan. This paper takes the aerostat as a point of entry into the ways in which new visualization technologies create the possibility for unexpected technological encounters. That is, through the increasing use of satellites’ indiscriminate extraterrestrial gaze, surveillance technologies such as aerostats are made visible to civilians. Aerostats exist as multiple objects, in multiple ontological moments as they are viewed from above by remote-surveyors, through the eyes of locals on the ground, and through the perspective of those behind controls. This paper probes the plane where these divergent modes of encounter intersect. Emerging from GIS-based remote-survey of a 1,500 square kilometer zone surrounding Kandahar, Afghanistan, wherein a network of aerostats was recorded, this paper is founded upon critical reflection on the content of visualizations and the process of interpretation they require. New visualization technologies have been examined as political apparatuses conveying specific narratives; however, they can also be disorienting to navigate or insufficient in themselves to create understanding. This paper underscores the centrality of the intersubjective experience with the image during interpretation and the reliance on other types of visualization from which understanding is often inextricable. By considering aerostats, this paper explores the objects produced by new modes of visualization and the novel ways in which they are seen and experienced.

Author

• Emily Boak, University of Calgary