England's crumbly coast

The day before I left for ATP I attended a sort of "mini conference" in the archaeology department on heritage and the environment.  It was a pretty interesting day, but the most striking thing that we were shown had to be a time-lapsed video of the east Anglian coast.  It is literally falling into the North Sea.  This doesn't really have anything to do with sea levels rising or anything like that.  It's been happening for thousands of years.  The cliffs just aren't terribly solid.  Many coastal towns and villages that existed in the middle ages have simply disappeared with the passage of time.

An artist named Bettina Furnee executed a number of "interventions" in the landscape around Bawdsey and several other places.  The video we were shown was of a number of lines of multicolored flags that she put in the ground near the cliff edge as it was in the beginning of the project.  A camera was set to take a photo of the stretch of coast every fifteen minutes.  This went on for a period of at least six months, perhaps a bit longer.  Either way, the results were pretty crazy.  You just see the flags (and the cliff) drop as the waves lick the shore.  Check it out.  The version the artist showed us had slightly creepy ambient music playing in the background; this one does not.  If you're interested in the rest of the project, the details are on the website.