Media, Hot & Cold| Drones, Infrared Imagery, and Body Heat

For decades, planes and satellites have remotely sensed the earth’s surface, transforming objects and sites into temperature data. Over time, this data has been used to understand the thermal properties of material phenomena and to generate heat signatures for objects ranging from nuclear power plants to glaciers. Within this planetary regime, the earth has been codified as a set of absolute temperature values such that military strategists, meteorologists, and earth scientists have built careers on perceived repetitions, variations, and/or anomalies in these values. In the current world order, temperature taking usually precedes decision making, and officials have invested enormous faith in the capacities of sensing instruments tasked to “see” electromagnetic radiation that is imperceptible to humans.