Ecological Interaction
Faculty: Jonathan Minchin, Kevin Matar
We arrived at Tortosa on the first day and then transfered to Benifallet for the rest of our time.
The week is to understant the cottage industrial in Benifallet, including visiting the wine cathedral, natural wine cellar, Benifallet cave, Medieval Cathedral and so on and develop our own project that would help the local cottage industrial related with our own thesis project.
𝔻𝕒𝕪 𝟙
We arrived at Tortosa and walked around the city. It was quiet on the street and there weren't many people walking around.
I was suprised that there were many cats on the street. According to Jonathan, many apartments and buildings are 'abandoned', nor the government and the people know who is the owner, and there were also many empty apartments. We also learned about the Spanish Civil War happened in Tortosa. The city is divided by a river, and the bridge was bombed during the war.
In the afternoon, we arrived at Benefallet to settle down our luggages and took a short tour at the village. We visited the apiculture shop, where it sells honey related products and is also a museum of the tools they use for apiculture, as well as storing the history of the war in Benifallet.
𝔻𝕒𝕪 𝟚
Today we visited the Wine Cathedral and the Natural Wine Cellar.(And Wine tasting><) We learned how the mass production of wine is made, and saw the method/machine/storage they use for modern days and in history.
The Natural Wine Cellar is own by Laureano and his family, who is a passionate man about appreciating wine and combining the business of wine with his life (my personal description:) I really like natural wine. Before I came to Spain, I was introduced to nature wine by going to the wine convention in Chengdu, because we had wine week for all the seller around the world. This time by visiting phsycally to a natrual wine cellar is more interesting that I get to expereince more closely.
Then we visited Laureano's smaller version of natrual wine production, his daughter Alicia is managing it. She also has a passionate attitude towards the wine making and living a life in a village at a young age, it makes me feel energetic``
𝔻𝕒𝕪 𝟛
Today we visited the Benifallet Caves. It is amazing to see the natural form of minerals. And I learned water from the ground sink into the cave and the red color that is floated is iron. The minerals are mostly formed by calcium.
The most amazing thing to me is the harmonies sound the minerals make! They don't allow recording in the cave:( and we can only take pictures from one 'room'.
Later we had the talk from Dr. Vladimir Baulin, about his construction and understanding in algorithm AI. https://synthetix.institute/
And we looked at how he does drone scan for the landscape.
Later we went to Jonathan's land and his house to visit. I liked it very much and I think it is huge amount of work to build a whole living system with land management. Respect to Jonathan!
At night we made salad together:)
𝔻𝕒𝕪 𝟜
Today we used the day to discuss our abstract of the project for ecological interaction class with Jonathan and Kevin. The project direction is to help the local cottage industry in Benifallet.
I wanted to dedicate on collecting sound from soil and translate it to people in artistic way of making connection with people and nature.
I learned from Jonathan's perspective about helping the local cottage industry by thinking in a way that how to create jobs for local people and I think in this case the importance of how to bring vitality and flouidity in sense of products and poeple without invading the local culture.
We are introduced to use Scira AI for acdemic research.
At night we had our picnic at Jonathan's house. It was so nice for me to watch the star without the lighting in the city and to admire the quietness in the mountain. It brings me to question that people from modern days can barely take that silent anymore.
𝔻𝕒𝕪 𝟝
We traveled back to Tortosa and had lunch at Forn de Canoja. It is a cool place with many interesting paintings~
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