The droned mode of engagement of my PhD research acts to put into perspective experiences from within and above, near and afar. I bought the drone about a month into my fieldwork in 2020; first with the aim to capture how the dessicated orchards that I navigated through using Google maps, did not appear from the ground as did they in the satellite images guiding my rides through the, at that point, largely unknown landscape of Southern Puglia. The landscape seemingly flourished with large green canopies, hinting a lively olive culture in the satellite images. Meanwhile, the orchards where ghostlike, uprooted, cut down, and overgrown void of human cultivation in reality. I wished to document this local-global technical-material dynamic, for which reason I bought the drone. As I started to learn how to fly the drone, I began experiment with it, attempting at a creative way of capturing perspectives and movements which I as a human am largely and physically incapable of, but which the drone yet let me explore. The imagery and places below exemplify some of these explorations.
