In considering my initial rock tracking – where I tracked one solo rock – I began to consider what it means to select just one rock to follow. Did my selection imbue the rock with a particular sense of importance, and does this direct attention away from the overall lively materiality? How else could I consider tracking or monitoring materials that perhaps has less of a specific focus in this way?
In response to these questions I have created two more offshoots: a series of 12 tracked rocks, and a series where I simply observed what moves through one stationary frame. The resulting time-lapse (taken over the course of a month) of the latter idea is as follows:
While not necessarily the best quality, I do think the piece is effective at capturing this idea of a whole moving beach of materials; seaweed dances across the rocks, sand clambers up and down, debris flows past at differing speeds. In some ways the piece is quite humorous/comical, echoing in part the absurdity of the initial rock tracking piece, although perhaps to a slightly lesser extent.
Going forwards I could consider setting up more than one of these, and on differing scales: mapping the movement of the whole beach, right down to mapping the movement of a 5cm square. It may be worthwhile me finding a way to make the ‘camera’ a little more steady, whether that be considering ways of doing this as I go along, or spending more time post-production, editing the images to be more cohesive.
Anna Harris 