T in the Park

T in the Park is a weekend-long music festival that has been held in Scotland each summer since 1994. Approximately 100 bands and artists perform throughout the weekend each year, with widely known artists like Coldplay, Beyoncé, Eminem, Mumford & Sons, The Killers, Rihanna, Florence + The Machine, and Foo Fighters having graced its stages in the last decade. Many other popular artists perform here, as well as up-and-coming unsigned artists, with music genres ranging from indie rock, techno rock, pop, hip hop, and more. The event brings in well over 100,000 people throughout the weekend, making it the one of the largest music festivals in the world.

As a musician and music lover, I felt drawn to T in the Park the moment I learned of it. What makes it even better is that it only took place 45 minutes from my temporary home in Dundee! In the video above, you'll get just a taste of what makes T in the Park such a special event here in Scotland, and perhaps you'll want to attend next summer too.

wet paint and the visibility of process

I've been seeing "wet paint" signs all over the place lately. Just this morning on our way to class we passed a few men with rollers and brushes re-painting the fence around the high school. Chalked warnings all along that side of the walkway warned pedestrians about the paint, marking a distance between foot traffic and the work-in-progress. In Edinburgh, too, there were placards placed outside several storefronts. I failed to take any photographs of them, so all I can give you are brief descriptive sketches of plain sandwich boards propped up under glossy window grates or simple laminated sheets of paper zip-tied onto open window shutters, all declaring "wet paint" and implying "please don't touch or smudge or disturb this area."

In Cockburn Street there was a man on a ladder, with bucket and brush, putting in a few lines of bright pink detailing behind the words "Pie"and "Sky" above a shop door. He was not accompanied (when I saw him at least) by any printed "wet paint" notice. His presence (and the ladder's) was enough of a warning, and perhaps the height of his hand-painted sign would exempt it from the need of any other.

Perhaps it is the few days of sun we had that's prompted so much repainting? Or maybe this kind of small-scale maintenance goes on constantly, and it's anyone's guess what's prompted me to notice it. The wet paint signs are a subtle and temporary form of redirection/crowd control. I am noticing plenty of other methods, less subtle, but presumably almost as temporary, for reasons beyond paint--airport hallways halved by plywood enclosures, whole streets closed off and walkways blocked by aluminum fences or orange cones. During my time in Manchester, a sidewalk diversion over/around a new tramway construction site seemed to shift several feet every time we walked back that way. There were men in orange vests and hard hats milling about, posted signs instructing cyclists to dismount and take care, and make-shift ramps from the existing pavement to the level where all this work was being done. Having recently read and written about Shapin and Schaffer's Leviathan and the Air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life, I started breaking all of these situations down using three technological categories: material (the fences, the ramps, ladder, paintbrush, the strewn-about tools), social (our training in walkways, the significance of orange vests and brawny workmen, our polite obedience to posted notices), and literary (the language and color of the posted signs themselves) tech.

Along with this, I thought about processes, and our tendencies to overlook them in favor of finishedness. We are often asked to overlook works in progress. Don't stop here--you might get paint on your sleeves. A tourist is not supposed to notice the unbuilt, unfinished sections of a city.

Well okay, a man on a ladder hand-painting a quaint pie-shop sign might add to the quaint ambiance of a place like old-town Edinburgh, but scaffolding around the grand, crumbly old castle will always be unsightly and unfortunate, right? We of course accept it as a necessary side-effect of preservation efforts and hope it'll all be finished and out of the way when we visit next time. It's a sort of trade-off.

If we are lucky, the construction scaffolding will be decorated with a pretty skin. This one (pictured above and below) around the National Library of Scotland caught my eye while we were in Edinburgh this week. Mixed in with the apologetic explanations for the building's state are little visual vignettes about the library's contents. It's a little bit advertising, a little bit educational, a little bit quirky entertainment, all sharing one lovely blue background.

The workmen probably didn't expect this tourist to be taking such intrusive photos of their worksite and its shell. This is not the main attraction; it's an underbelly, meant to stay as much behind the curtain as possible.

Are there material, social, and literary technologies mixed in here, as well? Sure. They are everywhere. Technical and professional writing (and yes, I count the doodles on this scaffold-cover as technical writing--don't you?) seem to combine them all in the most diverse ways whenever machines/tools/material tech + groups of audiences all need to work together using language and rhetoric.

Our class had the privilege of learning about and observing the work-in-progress of a new Forth road bridge, plus the interesting historical and technical details of the trio it will complete when it is finished. I was struck by both the grand, plodding pace of it all and by the deep, unpredictable necessity of engineering adaptations that have had to happen as part of the bridge-building process.

We didn't see any "wet paint" signs or their equivalent surrounding the new bridge site. We were specially invited into the education center to notice and bear witness to this set of spaces, despite their unfinishedness. There weren't any apologies for the state of things; rather, there was pride and confidence surrounding the project's huge arms and legs and lifespan. The histories and futures of the bridges were presented beautifully. 

Our role in such a space isn't like the role of the tourist confronted with a scaffold-wrapped monument. Our job is not to spend money and send postcards home anymore. I'm not sure what it is exactly. Not quite tourism, not quite school field trip, or something. Our invitation to the Firth of Forth this week did not come without conditions. We were invited so far, and no further. We were only allowed so much. In some ways the educational center and its staff managed our movements just like wet paint signs, aluminum fencing, and orange cones do with touristy foot traffic.

Who knows if this will become a theme for me or not, but I am very interested in where all these boundaries tend to fall and why. The lines (or do I want to call them grades or levels or spectrums instead?) between allowed and not-allowed, between unfinished and finished, between open-access and top-secret... how do they compare to the line between wet paint and dry paint?

Living Beyond the Living Room

The living accommodations with which we have been provided by the University of Abertay are far better than I expected. We have two toilets, three shower stalls, four bathroom sinks, a large kitchen equipped with two refrigerators, one dishwasher, one fully functioning oven, one large kitchen sink, and a microwave. Furthermore, each of us is also fortunate to have our own bedrooms (which is great not only for privacy, but to avoid being kept awake with one another’s snores) equipped with a twin size bed, desk, wardrobe, overhead shelf, and a small dresser. 

University of Abertay's flat accommodations at Alloway Halls in Dundee. (Photo by author)

Needless to say, our housing situation came as a pleasant surprise for all of us, however, I couldn’t help but notice our lack of what is perhaps one of the most utilized rooms in anyone’s home - a living room. There were no couches gathered around a television, with a coffee table in the center for us to prop our feet upon after long days of studying, researching, and exploring Dundee. Though I imagine each of us could access our beloved Netflix from our personal laptops during our downtime, I found myself somewhat longing for the idea of Disney movie nights with my flatmates, curled up on couches with blankets and freshly baked pastries.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining, and nor did I ever resent our lack of living room. It’s just that I am most familiar with bonding with friends and family in the comfort of a living room, convinced that I was in fact living. After accepting our accommodations as they are, I became somewhat thrilled at the challenge of pursuing life outside of the living room. Our community entertainment will not come from a screen during our six weeks in Scotland, and we must learn to live beyond the living room.

Since our arrival, I have seen and done things that could never be accomplished without a break from my comfort zone. I broke away from my introverted tendencies and made friends with complete strangers. I chatted with them in pubs, live music venues, bus stops, trains, and even standing in line at the grocery store (side note: lines are referred to as 'queues' here). I've distanced myself from my somewhat lazy habits and hiked through rolling hills, skipped the bus to walk through town, and climbed numerous steep inclines and seemingly endless steps (particularly in Edinburgh!). Instead of turning to a television or computer screen for excitement, I've visited the ruins of a 16th century castle, attended a live music festival in the city, and played lots of euchre (pronounced YOU-ker... it's a 4-person card game that is very popular in Indiana) with my flatmates at the kitchen table.

The beautiful countryside of Pitlochry... My group got somewhat lost on the way to Edradour, which is Scotland's smallest distillery, located in Pitlochry. (Photo by author) 

Live music being performed at Buskers, which a church-turned-pub in Dundee. Bands played at pubs all throughout the city for the entire weekend for what was called the Almost Blue Festival. (Photo by author)

Though a living room is certainly a friendly, comfortable place to settle down at the end of a long day, there is nothing that a living room can offer that would even come close to the vitality and exuberance I have experienced since I was forced to live beyond the living room.

Unlearning & Relearning

            As citizens of the USA, we are somewhat isolated from other cultures. It’s very rare that many Americans head too far south to expose themselves to the Mexican culture, and if we decide to visit Canada, there aren’t many differences in culture to which we must adapt. With that being said, we often take for granted the numerous functions of daily living which are employed so frequently that they are completed without a passing thought. We look left, right, and then left before crossing the street. We easily count our bills and coins when checking out at Walmart. We enter a restaurant, wait to be seated, order drinks, then dinner, eat, and then pay. These functions seem almost innate, as we’ve either been performing them or watching others perform them for our whole lives. 

             However, the struggle we encounter when being introduced to a new culture is we are forced to unlearn these our seemingly innate functions and relearn new ones. We must look right first before crossing the street in order to avoid getting hit by a double-decker bus. Instead of having four different coins to count out, we now have eight coins of varying values to learn. When entering a restaurant, there is no sign that reads, “Please wait to be seated,” but rather, the local customers just seem to somehow know when they’re supposed to wait to be seated, seat themselves and then order at the bar (and pay when they order), or make an ‘eat-in’ or ‘take away’ order at the counter upon arrival. 

This is inside a pub called Dirty Dick's in Edinburgh. I sat at a table for a few minutes waiting to be served when the cheerful bartender notified me that customers are supposed to order at the counter when ready. Lesson learned!

             Perhaps the best practice when relearning is to accept that our learned ways are often no longer applicable in another culture. Though this strategy goes against our human nature of being comfortable, secure, and even somewhat ‘all-knowing’, we simply must carry on; pay attention to what the locals do before crossing the street, struggle through counting out pence and pound coins at checkout, and ask the bartender if we’re supposed to order at the bar. There’s a strong possibility that we may look foolish at times, but there must certainly be some value in relearning our societal and cultural functions, as evidenced by the millions of people that have taken the journey of integrating into a new culture before us. 

The McManus Art Museum & Gallery. Surprisingly, this is NOT the front entrance to the gallery, though the grand double staircase here seems to indicate otherwise.