Drone crash on college campus in San Diego is art-hoax

Things you don't read every day in a college news publication:

“We understand that the recent drone crash incident has caused alarm amongst students and staff surrounding the research and use of drones on the UCSD campus and surrounding areas, and very much wanted to take this opportunity to educate the public about drone technologies and local deployments. While drone crashes are rare and another malfunction is extremely unlikely, we at the UC Center for Drone Policy and Ethics would also like to take this opportunity to teach basic drone safety techniques that can be practiced on a daily basis to keep ourselves and others safe.”

Relax, everyone, it's an art-hoax and part of an exhibition at the university titled "Drones at Home." The artist behind the incident is UCSD professor Ricardo Dominguez.

Hey, "amongst" was a tell.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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Wouldn’t ‘drone safety’ be ‘duck and cover’?
Or, head between your knees and kiss your arse goodbye.
http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith

My son would say “thats how dad always lands his radio controlled models”.
allenmcbride

I’m sure some of [the students] probably did think it was real,” Dominguez said of the drone crash, “but that’s one of the practices of new media art – what we call minor simulation. It creates an event that is difficult to understand as either real or not real.

I guess I’m too modernist for this kind of art. It seems pretty straightforward to me to understand that this hoax — excuse me, minor simulation — was not real.
- http://twitter.com/writebastard Ian Wood
  
  That sort of thinking won’t win you grants.
  - allenmcbride
    
    I dunno, maybe I could change my thinking with practice… I googled “new media art” “minor simulation” just now, and apparently Dominguez is the only person who uses the term. So his use of a silly pretentious-academic synonym for “hoax” is *itself* a hoax. That’s kind of cool. If intended.
    - http://www.facebook.com/dale.crighton.5 Dale Crighton
      
      Using silly pretentious academic jargon was how I passed all my art classes. Now matter how bad something looked, if you could BS your way through an explanation of your “concept”….. instant A.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Maybe you just didn’t understand it.
Carl Witthoft

Waiting for The Onion to chime in on this one. How dare some college art majors try to take over their niche?
jenjen

Just when the FBI thought they could delete him from their speed dial after his last project with the transborder cell phone water mapping thing.
Boundegar

Heh. Amongst.
http://www.kmoser.com kmoser

Couldn’t every hoax be considered “art-hoax”?
heckblazer

I suspect it’s not coincidental MCAS Miramar (former home of Top Gun) is just down the road from UCSD. When I was there having to stop the class until the noise from a passing fighter ended was not uncommon.
I’d add that a crashed drone is better and more interesting than many pieces of the official campus outdoor art collection.
- chaopoiesis
  
  It gets better… prominent drone-maker General Atomics is right next door.
Off White

What shocks me most is that they’ve logged the eucalyptus forest that the library used to float above.