Sampling Ground

Our photographic practice is not a conventional science/art crossover project, in which the creative dimension is emphasised through a visual illustration of scientific data. Rather, the process of Sampling Ground offers a perspective in which environment and art intersect as fields of experience and knowledge. The twelve samples we present here are a selection of previews of specific twentieth-century space heritage sites that we have visited and imaged using an A4 flatbed scanner. Using the scanner as a pseudo-scientific technical instrument allows us to ‘touch the land’ and record in a 1:1 ratio without the references of time or daylight. A departure from the conventional elements of landscape photography. As the preceding image Orroral Floor (Flatbed Moon 5) demonstrates, we eventually assemble and print these direct encounters with ground as representations of land surface