By Alex Rivera and Angel Nevarez
LowDrone.com lets users remotely pilot the ‘LowDrone,’ a vehicle which melds the lowrider, a customized car outfitted with hydraulics that allow the car to ‘hop,’ with the functionality of the drone, an unmanned aerial vehicle equipped with surveillance cameras that has been an evolving weapon and tool of airborne surveillance for nearly a hundred years.
Lowriders are a technology developed primarily by Latino youth in barrios across the southwest.
Drones are a technology recently deployed along the U.S. / Mexico border.
Through LowDrone.com, users control a customized lowrider – the ‘LowDrone’ – and ‘hop’ over one of the most surveilled spaces on the planet: the U.S./Mexico border between Tijuana and southern California.
LowDrone.com was commissioned for InSite2005, as part of ‘Tijuana Calling,’ curated by Mark Tribe.
The LowDrone was first exhibited as an installation in 2012 as part of the show ‘Drones at Home,’ at the gallery at CALIT2, at the University of California, San Diego.
