Droned Attractions

Abstract

In the early autumn of 2024, as part of China’s 75th National Day celebrations, over 10,000 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), known commonly as drones, took to the sky in Shenzhen. The show, called “City of Sky… Maybe Shenzhen,” broke two world records: first, for the “largest number of drones flying simultaneously under the control of a single computer,” and second, for “the most drones forming an aerial image.” Moving together and drifting apart in a slow dance, they created complex, three-dimensional tableaux which included silhouettes of figures performing Wing Chun martial arts, Shenzhen’s metropolitan skyline re-imagined as a floating island, and, in a self-reflexive mode, the outline of what appears to be a large military drone displaying a jumbotron screen, accompanied by smaller quadcopters. The record came just three weeks after 8,100 drones flew over Shenzhen in an earlier event that had then taken the Guinness World record for the largest number of drones flying simultaneously. As one might expect from the repeated smashing of world records, Shenzhen is the global drone capital, with more than 600,000 multirotor operations in 2023 alone. Thanks to the dominance of DJI, China is the largest manufacturer of consumer drones in the world.