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.
