10th March


 

I went back to the quarries with the drone to capture some of the inaccessible areas. Inside, several levels of excavation meant some areas of the pit were not approachable on foot. I started the drone in order to see the stepped layers of stone that escalated above. High winds made navigation tricky, as the drone collided with some stacked rocks and then into a drooping tree. The heavily compressed, glitching images it sent back display the technology’s own grainy texture which permeates the images of stone. The white limestone surfaces were surprisingly bland and indefinite, unremarkable in their uniformity yet grandiose through their sheer size. I took extra images on my phone to compensate for areas not covered by the drone footage. Grey flecks pervade the images. The repetitive textures and tones of the rubble could be confused with the digital grain of glitching and corrupted MPEGs from the drone footage. I recovered the drone and ventured onwards, around the perimeter of the site.

Glitch textures are stretched across

the geometric cuboid

and the surrounding rubble.

The dirt appears as though melted,

running like a stream

towards the edges

of the composition.

Holes appear in the middle

of the cube's faces,

as if seared into the

image by its radiated heat.

Textures of dirt and rubble

around it stretch out as if

speeding away from

the centre.

A confusion

of greys peppers the shapes,

signifying details of 

stones bordered on each side by 

vast areas of blank

smudged forms.

Grey holes appear

in the rubble, fading

into the scan's perimeter.


I continued to capture images

from around the quarry:

areas of rubble,

sections of dirt track with traces

of previous excavations.

Huge cubes of stone

were placed outside of the quarries,

ready for collection.

I stepped around these features,

clicking the shutter

 from several angles.

At times, the sun would catch

the faces of the rock,

scorching a white-hot shape

onto the image sensor.

This would affect the surrounding

environment's 

exposure and capture.