alight the turning earth

This project premiered at the SER Society for Ecological Restoration World Conference in Darwin in September 2023. It is a four-screen display using stunning time-lapse satellite imagery across the Australian and African continents.

Over many years of using satellite data creatively I have constantly found myself in awe of the planetary phenomena unfolding before me, and the knowledge we can glean from this unfolding.  This project celebrates the incredible Earthly phenomena that we can observe when we look at satellite data through a creative lens – an aesthetic lens, a lens that seeks to communicate a feeling for the Earth in the viewer.

We see wonders here – vast river systems, irrigation schemes, salt lakes pulse and shrink as the seasons pass, clouds cluster on coastlines and mountains with boundless variation. And we glimpse and can imagine the hardship of life in arid lands, of crop cycles driven by drought and flood.

We also come to know some stunning forms; the arabesques of a salt lake, the checkerboard of croplands, the sinuous pulsing of rivers in flood.

The title of this work tells a story of discovery, in a way, that arises when we think about alighting on the turning Earth. When we alight from the Earth, we step off it, and hitch a ride on a satellite orbiting 700kms from the surface of the planet. Yet in doing so we also see what the satellite sees, we alight upon the Earth, but this time we see and sense the planet from above, and we see it lit by the furnace of solar radiation that powers the Earth system. And it gives us this, the turning Earth, a beloved Earth, something to treasure.

Produced for the 2023 World Conference of the SER Society for Ecological Restoration in Darwin, this project uses satellite data from the Sentinel 2 satellite, via the Digital Earth Africa and Digital Earth Australia platforms. It is made with the support of Geoscience Australia. Read more about GA’s work and this project here.