Cape Farewell Greenland Voyage 2007

Finally managed to cast an eroded piece of glacial ice, something that Heather and I have wanted to do since we first saw them, but found difficult due to the nature of the materials. Any casting material needs to be warm to set and ice melts when a warmer substance is placed on it. This time using snow print wax (used to lift footprints or car tyre tracks from snow by the police) seems to have done the trick; it forms an insulating layer between the ice and the warm plaster mix. This mould is now sitting over the washbasin in our bunk with a small hole at its base through which the melting ice is dripping. I’ll bring back the negative form to the UK and then hopefully be able to cast this into glass; rendering permanent something so transient.

[photopress:low_res_ice_before_casting.jpg,full,pp_image]

[photopress:low_res_ice_casting.jpg,full,pp_image]

Images: Dan Harvey with ice before casting (above) and casting the ice on the deck of the Noorderlicht (below).

Just found an image I took in 2004 of the glacier at the end of this fiord and have compared this to an image taken yesterday -hopefully these will be posted on web, the difference is obvious. Things here are changing fast! When outside day or night at least once or twice an hour you hear the noise like distant thunder as massive chunks of ice peel of the glaciers, the Kongsvegen glacier we were told is now moving at a rate of 2 meters a day!

[photopress:kongsvegan_2004.jpg,full,pp_image]

Kongsvegan glacier photographed in 2004 during the Cape Farewell voyage.

[photopress:kongsvegan_2007.jpg,full,pp_image]

Kongsvegan glacier photographed in 2007, during the Cape Farewell Youth Expedition.

I have been experimenting with inks on a cut block of ice reveling the small tubular holes that run deep within them like blood vessels. Will try tomorrow to push this work further and would love to understand the science behind these capillaries.

Had a great time hunting for the right block of ice on the second try we managed to lift it onto the small boat, felt far too heavy for the vessel but managed to get it back to harbor in Ny Alesund and then with the help of another crane from a lorry managed to lifted it up onto the quay – a beautiful piece of ice. Wanted to finally carve a clear ice lens but it has been so warm here that whilst carving its been cracking in the warmth, hope tonight to be able to pour water over it so that it becomes clear again then tomorrow if it is sunny… we’ll see if it will burn something….

If not I´m planing to set some ice on fire so stay posted for some flaming ice pics. of one sort or another.

[photopress:liam_frost.jpg,full,pp_image]

Liam Frost
Musician (UK)

“It feels so weird when I play solo now,” says reluctant superstar Liam Frost, of Liam Frost and the Slowdown Family. In fact, the actual name of the band is a little more complicated “I do honestly feel like it is just The Slowdown Family now. I always did want to be in a band.”

“It just so happened, it started off as The Slowdown, and then we got some more band members, so it became The Slowdown Family. And then I lost some band members, and it felt stupid calling myself The Slowdown Family when it was just me on my own, so I used my own name. But then I got a band back and I was just on the verge of getting signed and we settled on Liam Frost and the Slowdown Family.”

Liam signed to Lavolta Records at the end of 2005, soon after a tour with kindred spirit Stephen Fretwell, and quickly put out the gorgeous ‘She Painted Pictures’ EP, which was quickly snapped up by those in the know. A four week residency in Manchester and London in January and Febraury 2006 proved to be a sold out success story and was quickly followed by a debut UK tour in May. Summer 2006 saw Liam and the band spreading the word with numerous festival dates and special one-off shows with Elbow at Somerset House and Snow Patrol at the Eden Project in Cornwall.

Singles The Mourners of St Paul’s and The City Is At Standstill have also been released over summer 2006 and both can be found on the debut album Show Me How The Spectres Dance from September 11th. The album was produced by Danton Supple (Coldplay, Doves, Morrissey) and casts the net wider than the typical singer-songwriter album; it shows off exactly the kind of level Liam and The Slowdown Family are working on.

Combining northern grit with a psychedelic imagination; personal tragedy with black humour; a strong, centrifugal solo artist with the strength and unity of a big band; Liam Frost and The Slowdown Family will confound expectations at every turn. “At the gigs”, says Liam, “there is an element of the singer-songwriter fans, we do get that. But we also get the emo kids as well. I actually think we’re as much of an emo band as anything else.”

The only thing you can say for certain is that you’ll be floored in an instant.

www.liamfrost.co.uk

[photopress:Cobbing6679.jpg,full,pp_image]

Vikram Seth
Writer (UK/India)

Vikram trained as an economist. His first novel, The Golden Gate: A Novel in Verse describes the experiences of a group of friends living in California. His acclaimed epic of Indian life, A Suitable Boy, won the WH Smith Literary Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best Book). He is also the author of the novel An Equal Music and the biography Two Lives, as well as Beastly Tales, a book of ten animal fables in verse, which includes the ecological tale ‘The Elephant and the Tragopan’.

“People need to know about what is being lost, and I think it is an inspired idea to get sculptors or writers or photographers or other artists to come on what is largely a scientific expedition.”
Vikram Seth

[photopress:iceburg_hunting.jpg,full,pp_image]

[photopress:arnie_lassos_dans_ice.jpg,full,pp_image]

[photopress:arnie_dan_and_ice.jpg,full,pp_image]

[photopress:dans_ice_reaches_quay.jpg,full,pp_image]

[photopress:dan_ice_for_ice_lens.jpg,full,pp_image]

Hunting, collecting and moving ice for the Ice Lens.

[photopress:marcus_brigstocke.jpg,full,pp_image]

Marcus Brigstocke
Comedian (UK)

Stand-up comic, writer, presenter and actor, Marcus hosts The Late Edition, his own live topical TV show on BBC 4. Marcus makes guest appearances on Have I Got News For You and NewsKnight. He also features on The Now Show, Just a Minute and The Today Show on BBC Radio 4. His humour holds people to account and encourages those with the power to effect change to do so. Through his Now Show counter piece to Martin Durkins’ discredited Great Global Warming Swindle an alliance was formed with the scientific community. Many scientists have since sent messages of thanks and support. Marcus’ experiences in the Arctic will feed into a touring show, to be recorded for TV and entitled Your Time Is Up.

“Don’t tell me there’s no point in us doing anything about climate change until China does something about it. There’s a lot of stuff that China doesn’t do that is still well worth our while… Human Rights, Democracy and Cheddar. There’re three for a start.”
Marcus Brigstocke

www.marcusbrigstocke.com
Read Marcus’s Telegraph Blog

So a very long journey up here via Stockholm, Oslo, Tromso then here to Longyearbyen. Arrived with snow falling, although not much has settled (leaving the textured rock surfaces drawn and enhanced with white dust).
There is something about returning here- so far away from the life style we live back down South and yet now very familiar to me.
The age of this land, the rock formations. You can read through it’s history, the strata laid down over millenniums, exposed, eroded and cracked into dust by the cold and ice.
It’s a raw reality that belittles everything else and puts this world back into perspective. Lonyearbyen is like a Wild West frontier town, one of the changes though is that now they are beginning to place advertising flags down the main street, lets hope this is kept to a minimum, and in fact shouldn’t be allowed at all !
Have tried today to pick up a Polar Bear bone from the Sysselmannen’s Environmental Adviser – it was put aside for us 2 years ago. Seems that I now need a CITES agreement to import it back to the UK for a piece of work Heather and I are working on. Hope Heather can get this for me by my return here next week!

[photopress:amy_balkin_1.jpg,full,pp_image]

Amy Balkin
Artist (USA)

As an artist, Amy considers how humans create, interact with, and make an impact on the social and material landscapes they inhabit. Recent projects include Invisible-5, a collaborative work touring California’s Interstate-5 corridor, San Francisco to Los Angeles. The project investigates the experiences those communities fighting for environmental justice along the I-5.

“As political and cultural awareness of global warming grows, the reading, meaning and value of the Cape Farewell voyages will also develop. I hope to return from the trip with an enhanced understanding of the Arctic as a system, and with an increased ability to speak to the impacts of climate change.”
Amy Balkin

www.publicsmog.org
www.invisible5.org

[photopress:Cobbing_email21.jpg,full,pp_image]

Dallas Murphy
Writer (USA)

Dallas Murphy is the author of four novels, two plays, and most recently two non-fiction books. “I published Rounding the Horn, about Cape Horn in 2004. I sailed down by the Horn in 2000 aboard Skip Novak’s Pelagic. Last month I published To Follow the Water, about oceanography today and the ocean’s influence on climate. I’m a serious sailor with a fair bit of offshore racing/cruising experience. And I’m delighted to be sailing with the Cape Farewell Project.”