Hypervision

“According to a National Geographic TV program, the highest measured speed of a peregrine falcon is 389 km/h—a sensational skill mirrored by the sensational sensory precision of its eyesight. A peregrine’s brain evolved to provide these creatures with hypervision capable of processing images at a higher frequency than human brains.”

My brain is encased in a white construction helmet, its purposes as enigmatic as the landscapes we traverse. Twenty-five minutes, rocking side-to-side on the hard-shell seats in a sunshine-yellow Doomsday Safari truck packed with international scholars and artists. In the window, the vast expanse of one of Europe’s largest open-pit mines. Grey, brown, pale, black, vivid. Sorted. Red, ochre, yellow. All Sorted.

Noises fill the air as we disembark through a steep staircase into a high and hazy sky. “O wow. This is magnificent.” Caterpillars and trucks circle humongous feet with wheels and endless tracks, and belts and stairs, moving colossal masses of sand from here to … somewhere over there. “Holy…” In the background, a giant bucket-wheel excavator breaks into the “upper” layers of the sandy soils. Sand falls at an unnatural speed – too slow because it falls too deep. “To make free the coal!” the guide explains. Everything here is “to make free the coal”. Giants with a single purpose. Sieving sandy moonscapes atop a subterranean forest.

After listening to noise and words and inner thoughts (“Giant steps is what you take, walking on the moon”), the gaze pivots up. And there in the distance—and here everything is at a distance—is something circling in the sky. “This are the Falcons. They live in F60”. “F60” – as “TAKRAF Abraumförderbrücke F-60” – as in the “reclining Eiffel Tower “, as in “the largest moving technical machines in the world.” “Falcons, yes. And two pairs of wolves!” Falcons and wolves, ok. “Three pairs of Falcons and two pairs of wolves”. On 108 km2 of barren nothingness. And they live in this 500 m-long monster. And the crew cares about them. Cares deeply about them. Not many signs of life out here anyway, one remarks.

So, I think of Falcons-F60. The fastest animal in the world lives on the largest moving machine ever built by humans. More superlatives in this industrial Jurassic Park, that does not spare moments of awe at every bend the bus takes.

“Human brains evolved to comprehend anything above 60Hz (or flashes of light) per second as a solid stream of light. This rate is referred to as the Flicker Fusion Frequency (FFF), a crucial term in the psychophysics of vision. The Peregrine Falcon developed a faster FFF, 100 Hz per second, for avoiding obstacles and having a quicker reaction time while hunting.” 

I try to make my vision flicker momentarily and stir up my brain, which has seemingly fallen into a state of rest despite or because of the continuous spectacle we find ourselves in. And while I imagine being a falcon and struggle with the thought of being a falcon, I come to one illusion.

As displaced as it seems in this featureless, human desert, the falcon has another vision. It might not need its sharp and fast eyes, nor does it necessarily need its speed. All it needs is a distance to this world. Unfettered by the rules of the games down here, seeing together what cannot be experienced by those who wear boots.

Unrestricted and unhindered from any of the perimeters, it circles across the fences – the endless fences. Across the sandy shores of flooded lakes. Cerulean color, created by Lausitzer lime. Across the rails and pipes. The conveyor belts, that run at a deadly speed of 24 km/h, ready to rip off any hands, and heads, and for that matter any other available limb of trespassing or unruly visitors that go beyond this line. “Yes, this line”.

It circles and crosses, untroubled by the warning signs indicating danger to life caused by unstable ground, landslides, and tsunamis. A treacherous landscape. Full of hidden pits.

It does not have to follow the winding roads either. Roads that have to submit to the logic of extraction and excavation. That have to fall in between, as so many things here have to fall in between. Into what was or is left. 

Its vision unrestricted by the hedges, the dikes, by the shrubbery and young birch trees and the fences, it can see that the infrastructural sublime of endless PV-panels and open strip mines borders the boredom of uprooted rurality in Brandenburg at every corner. 

Flying high and far, it simply crosses it all. The patchy, technical landscapes of meticulously separated functional zones that, due to the void of topography, remain unaware of each other. 

It can see past, present, future. Deep time. The old remaining factory towns. Raised by steam and red brick. To house workers, to mine for coal. For more coal. For more steam. For more brick. For more workers. Well, that is past. 

It can see the inhuman scale of the remaining mines, filled with an exciting monotony of heaps and heaps of sieved sands in all colors of the geological rainbow.

It can see the strange order and geometry of dark shimmering solar panels. Probably, Chinese solar panels, probably forged with Chinese coal, hinting at Germany´s green future. Just as the industrial hubs and racetracks—and again pipes, and rails— that are sprouting from the ground.

Down here, I cannot see this. Cannot understand this palimpsest. Cannot understand what is going on—all at once. So, the shutter of the camera flickers, and I take one picture after the other. To show it to friends.