Sites for Watching (how political economy works) is a video artwork that processes links between people, technology and nature. It was created while O’Brien was artist-in-residence at Cow House Studios in Co. Wexford, and the footage focuses on a site local to the studios, Johnstown Castle. This highly monitored space is home to 3 research operations: Johnstown Castle Dairy - Teagasc’s research dairy Farm, Environment Research Centre for soils, air, water quality and agro – ecology, and Met Éireann’s Johnstown Synoptic Automatic Weather Station.

Choosing to film some footage of the site by drone, the artist is exploring our engagement with how we orient ourselves in space and time. Her process-led methods of visually recording the site and editing the footage, are influenced by new technologies in surveillance and tracking, which affect how people navigate the earth’s landscapes below, on and above surface level.

Looming in the background of this work is the Present Sensor Monitor, a fully automated replacement for a position that was traditionally manned. Measuring temperature, wind speed and atmospheric pressure, along with levels of visibility and precipitation, this cross-armed meteorological instrument holds symbolic presence in the landscape.

Photography courtesy of Frank Abruzzese