IN THE ROBOT SKIES. A DRONE LOVE STORY, 2016 STUK – KU Leuven coproduction with the support of Imagin Film Festival and Channel 4

In the Robot Skies is the world’s first narrative short film, shot entirely through drones. In collaboration with the Processing Speech and Images research unit from the Department of Electrical Engineering at KU Leuven, the film is captured by a specially developed flock of camera drones each with their own set of cinematic rules and behaviours. The film explores the drone as a cultural object, not just as a new instrument of visual storytelling but also as the catalyst for a new collection of urban subcultures. In the same way the New York subway car of the 80s gave birth to a youth culture of wild style graffiti and hip hop, the age of ubiquitous drones as smart city infrastructure will create a new network of surveillance activists and drone hackers.

Through the eyes of the drone we see two teenagers each held by police order within the digital confines of their council estate tower block in London. A network of drones survey the council estates, as a roving flock off CCTV cameras and our two characters are kept apart by this autonomous aerial infrastructure. We watch as they pass notes to each other via their own hacked and decorated drone, like kids in an old fashioned classroom, scribbling messages, tagging their technology. We watch as they fly their drones back and forth to each other, whilst constantly running around the council estate towers to try and avoid the surveillance drones that are always overhead. In this near future city, drones are the agents of state surveillance but also become co-opted as the aerial vehicles through which two teens fall in love.

This newly commissioned work is the first STUK-KU Leuven coproduction and was developed in close collaboration with the KU Leuven Processing Speech and Images research unit from the Department of Electrical Engineering (ESAT) at KU Leuven, represented by Prof Dr Toon Goedemé.

Director Liam Young
Script by Tim Maughan

Liam Young (AU)

Liam Young is an Australian designer, futurist, critic and curator currently living and working in London. His practice is two-fold. With the nomadic studio The Unknown Fields Division, he travels on annual expeditions to the ends of the earth to investigate unreal and forgotten landscapes, alien terrains and industrial ecologies. The think tank Tomorrows Thoughts Today explores the consequences of fantastic, speculative and imaginary urbanisms.