Einasleigh Crater

Goodwin (2013) Einasleigh Crater #04

“Bring the drones home…”

The Einasleigh Crater series was developed in reaction to the commercialisation of the space industry and the gradual “looking away” from the stars that have characterised the recent “affective turn” in philosophy and art. The Einasleigh photographic images are texture portraits of an ancient and brutally desolate landscape not unlike the scientific target quarries of deep space. I have mashed these images with samples from the Mars Curiosity rover website (among other cultural touchstones) as a comment on both the simulation of unmanned space exploration and the Wall-E-esque celebrity of the Curiosity rover mission.

Some Background

The township of Einasleigh sits virtually on top of the Copperfield River Gorge and is the site of one of the first mineral deposits discovered in the North Queensland region of Australia by the geologist, Richard Daintree, in 1866. In the early 1900s the town was a thriving mining community complete with a hospital, a railway line, commercial stores and a small business district. Today however, it is but a glimmer of its former self – a small remote outpost approx. 220km south-west of Innisfail. Today it is more famous for its pub, The Einasleigh Hotel, than its mining history. However, in a vast tract of country that is mostly flat and and monotone in composition the little township of Einasleigh seems somewhat surreal perched as it is on the edge of the Copperfield River Gorge. Here you will find some of North Queensland’s most unique rock formations and dark alien textures.

Goodwin (2013) Einasleigh Crater #06

In this era of unmanned space flight – of probes and bots and drones – how might one explore and document this ancient territory? After all this is the era of virtuality, when the celebrity of the Curiosity rover and the Hollywood-styled animations of its exploits are more visible – and more celebrated in the popular media steam – than the science which underpins them. Since the Rosetta probe deployed its Philae lander onto the surface of a dusty rock some 500 million kilometers out in the far reaches of deep space, is it not time to start thinking about bringing the drones home, to recycle the technology, and get to work back here on earth?