Quiet areas: outer experiences and inner sensations – a qualitative approach using film and drones

This paper argues that drone filming can substantiate our understanding of multisensorial experiences of quiet areas and urban landscapes. Contrary to the distanced gaze often associated with the drone, this paper discusses drone filming as an intimate performativity apparatus that can affect perception as a result of its interrelationships between motion, gaze, and sound. This paper uses four films, one of which is a drone flyover, to launch a discussion concerning a smooth and alluring gaze, a sliding gaze that penetrates landscapes, and site appearance. Films hold the capacity to project both a site and near-sensory experience. In so doing, films can achieve an intimate reflection of both outer experience and affection of inner sensations, and the audio-visual and time-space based presentation of this dualism can mimic human experience. This paper discusses how this embedded transference and transcendence can facilitate a deeper understanding of intimate sensations, substantiating their role in the future design and planning of urban landscapes. Hence, it addresses the ethics of an intimacy perspective (of drone filming) in the qualification of quiet areas.