Email Dispatch #2 September 30, 2007

Hi All!

I am writing to you from the cusp of sleep and already I am mentally readying myself for the coming week, sure to be packed with lots of new information and experiences. The past week has been full - an Art and Ecology conference focusing on the ecology of language, viewing previous MA students work, getting to know my new classmates, beginning the course, riding my funky new bike (which I am exchanging tomorrow) on dark paths by the river, making new friends, drinking lots of tea and my first walk along the coast.

I am very excited about the course itself now that it's begun and I know more what to expect of the next year. Set up to expose us to new ways of approaching our work through four different modules, the course is comprised of a series of guest lecturers/scientists/artists/authors etc., who then join us for the rest of that particular module as a participant in the group and an ongoing resource for students. The group dynamic and cohesion is an important focus and resource in the course. As students with our own experiences, the course fosters an atmosphere of exchange and emphasizes our own available resources for each other. Our first guest lecturer was Christian Taylor, an ecologist and micro-biologist who gave us a crash course in the scientific method and his approach to ecology as a microbiologist. We spent a day doing field work with the tools and techniques we had just learned about, devised experiments, conducted them and presented results. My group did a little investigation into the churchyard lichen, which I found out is a common place to study lichen because of the convenient dates provided on headstones. My camera lens has had a perpetual magnetic relationship with lichen, so it was satisfying to learn a bit more. It ended up being a comical experiment involving anointing headstones with lemon juice and peering at them through a magnifying glass (aka sherlock) to see if it caused an acid or base reaction - which in turn related to the species of lichen growing on it. We then feasted on a stew of wild plants collected from the estate and bagetts with local cheeses and wine.

Several of us girls on the MA course decided to take Saturday afternoon to walk some miles along the coast, my first first exposure to the English coastline. Simply amazing! The Saxon lanes leading to the coast were quite an experience in navigation. Our mode of transport was a big diesel mercedes transport van running on veggie oil, belonging to one of the students in the course, her home on wheels. The walk along the coast was incredible with beautiful weather and stunning views of green fields, cliffs and green-blue sea. We picked wild blackberries and marveled at plants and trees along the way. I was struck by the evident culture of walking here with easements through private driveways, pastures and fields. At one point we saw a sign which pointed with an arrow "Minehead 432 Miles." I plan to take advantage of the beautiful trails while I'm here and hopefully doing a longer walk or two or three. Along the trail we walked past the ruined village of Hallsands, which was swept out to sea in the early 20th century. The ruins of the village sit perched on the cliff which long ago overlooked a beach, but now plunge straight into the sea. Patrick Cooper, the dad of the family who I'm living with, is a children's book author and wrote a book about this village. After being there I can see why he did.

Now I'm gearing up for the next week which promises to be equally interesting. At the end of the week we will be working with a sound artist to build an apparatus to capture radio active storms on Jupiter which we will broadcast live on Totnes Radio. There will be a live webbroadcast at www.dartington.ac.uk.soundart at 6:00 pm UK time which is 7 hours later than mountain standard time. Tune if if you feel like it - I have no idea what we'll find!

Hope you're all doing well!

Love,
Claire