Saturday 19 Nov: Our post-diluvian presentation

I wake up after a much more restful sleep than the previous night and do a bit of “sink laundry” before heading down to breakfast. Today: a salmon omelette with haggis balls. It’s my new favorite.

Today is our big day: the debut at the Being Human Festival. There’s a backstory as to why this day is so momentous.

The backstory

Flashback to the first time we visited, in November 2016: we were on a faculty exploratory to kick start our study abroad program and partnership, a visit which happened to coincide with the Being Human Festival. There were exhibitions and events, the most outrageous of which was a Martian Autopsy inspired by War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. I was so impressed by this synthesis of performance, art, research, and humor!

When we brought our first student group to Scotland, it was March 2018 and of course this did not intersect with Being Human at all. So how could we participate in Being Human? Chris mentioned that Michael Eades, the BH chair in London, was interested in internationalizing the festival, and it was here that I saw an opportunity for our little college to punch above its weight: we could be the host of the North American debut of Being Human.

I spent an inordinate amount of time writing for a major internal Penn State grant proposing a Being Human debut for 2019. I lined up dozens of support letters from administrators on both sides of the pond, created a budget, developed a community partner downtown, the whole nine yards.

The proposal went nowhere. One reviewer parochially commented that they “never heard of this festival” so “why is it important” — to my ears, shocking sentiments if uttered by a freshman, never mind a faculty colleague at a Research 1 institution (it should be mentioned this reviewer was not at Abington, but rather at University Park, a campus notorious for self-congratulatory navel-gazing). Long story short: the Being Human Festival did in fact make its North American debut that year — not at Abington, but at a little university to the north of us named Princeton.

If we can’t bring it to Abington…

So I thought: fine then, if we can’t bring Being Human to Abington, we’ll bring Abington to Being Human! I pitched the idea of a Fall-based study abroad program to our Global Programs office and Dundee. Because Spring term is super-saturated with study-abroad programming, Global Programs was seeking to expand study abroad in Fall, so this was a slam dunk. Dundee also loved the idea. This became a way to get students involved with presentation and publication at an international level, line items on a resume that undergraduates rarely get the opportunity to earn.

At about the same time, Mary Modeen contacted me with a proposal to develop a formal institutional partnership, and this trip became part of the “dating game” that eventually culminates in such an agreement. Abington has only two partnerships like this: one in Germany, one in China, both relating strictly to STEM disciplines. Global Programs is seeking not only more partnerships in general, but ones with and arts/humanities emphasis also. This fit that bill.

Now, fast forward past the long Covid-induced delay in its implementation, and let’s just say a lot is riding on the success of this study-abroad program overall and tonight’s event specifically.

Morning work

So, it’s off to DCCS for our morning work to set up the presentation. Norrie is back, students are frantic with last minute “inking” and coloring for comics pages, scaring up props, and scripting their performances.

Chris, Stephen and I organize the quite amazing open space adjacent to the work area. There are, of course, limits. I have 5 projectors and media players, one laptop, and a portable PA with microphone. At one point I had envisioned large, space-transforming projections, but these projectors turn out to be standard classroom presentation grade, with not much in the way of a wide throw, and the extension cords are limited in their reach. So instead of creating a fully immersive environment, we organize one open wall with the backdrops I created yesterday into a kind of mural. Stephen goes off to find USB flash drives to insert in the media players (note to self: one can never have enough USB flash drives). He also covers a visually noisy large electrical closet door with white paper to help make a “stage” area.

Improvising a venue

We can’t do much with the visually noisy wall of shelving units that divides this space from the work area, so we orient the chairs toward the corner of the room at a 30 degree angle, ensuring all that visual noise is not in the field of view. I’m able to back one projector up far enough that I can make a full-wall projection of the main slideshows. I’m also delighted to discover there’s a bluetooth link on the PA so I can run the ambient soundscape from my laptop directly through that. Since I don’t really have time to create a proper sound file, I set up a poor-man’s mixing board of the different ambient soundscapes by simultaneously opening them in QuickTime, setting them to loop, and dialing in a volume that mixes them well. This is super-simple…

… but alas, it’s not to be so with the images! I’m peeved at the bloatware limiting the functionality of the media players and the steep learning curve required to simply project a static image. The damn things go to sleep without detecting activity, and every time one reopens them, one is treated to an utterly time-wasting little cutesy opening animation. If I ever see that animation again, I may go into a PTSD-induced coma.

Learning to love Ken Burns

I can’t keep messing around with this so I have to come up with a hacky workaround. I decide to make a slideshow out of copies of the same image. This works, but I encounter another bloatware problem: slideshows on these media players display images with an annoying Ken-Burns-style pan-and-zoom effect. So I discover where the settings are for this in the preferences, but despite checking it OFF, I somehow can’t disable it. I mess with this until about 2:00, hours past time when this working session was to close.

I decide I LOVE the Ken Burns effect and let it go. So I set the slideshows up at slightly different rates of change so this randomizes the rhythm of the image switch. Considering the standing start and learning curve for all the tech gear, I’m quite pleased with the outcome. I just had to change my idea to something compatible with the way the equipment wanted me to work, a common occurance with technology!

So now I finally have time on my own.

Verdant Works

I’m starving and it’s late, so I decide to stop at a place along the way to the Verdant Works, a Dundee museum I had never found the time to visit before. Quite by accident I re-discover a place we had eaten at during our first visit, a great place off the beaten track called The West House. I thought I’d never find this place again. My mental map had incorrectly placed it much closer to campus and I couldn’t recall the name.

I’d been eating so many rich items I decided lunch today needed to be a salad which I thoroughly enjoyed, and bookmarked the place for future reference. By 3 PM, I’m losing light, so I head off to the Verdant Works. The cashier issuing tickets warns me there’s not much light left and they close a bit early, but I assure her that I won’t feel short-changed by a short visit. The complex is vast, and the interior of the main factory is amazing, like a cathedral for the worship of jute.

Verdant Works, Dundee

There are people in Peter Cromar’s descendancy chart that are documented as having been employed by the Verdant Works. I sniff around for their ghosts. When I leave it’s dark, so I return to DCCS through the north side of campus to fire up those cranky media players. The rain of the past 3 days has finally let up! It’s a pleasant walk back. I later learn that we had received a month’s worth of rain in the span of 3 days, outrageous even by the extreme standards of Scottish weather.

The big events

Chris has combined two Being Human events that evening, a smart move to ensure both are well attended. The first event is the debut of the Robert Duncan Milne comic published by Dundee, the second being Abington’s Steampunk Carnival. There’s a nice spread of snacks and beverages, like an art opening. I see a lot of old friends here: Damon Herd, who now runs the graduate program in comics studies, and Phil Vaughan, who now works at Abertay University. We make plans to go out together to a pub for food and drink after the event.

For our event, I function as a “ringmaster” introducing each group coming up in turn to present their work. These are quasi-dramatic interpretive readings of the comics by the authors as the panels are projected on, behind, and adjacent to them. depending on how each team wanted to use the projection. This is variation on Damon Herd’s performative DeeCAP multi-media presentations, though I introduce scale in the projection that I think helps make it more immersive.

“Workshopping”

As I introduce the Carnival, I cover for these relatively untested performers by saying tonight we are workshopping a work in progress, so we appreciate audience feedback to help us refine it. The performative presentations are uneven, though this is not unexpected, and my introduction has hopefully warded off any expectation of spit and polish. At the extremes, one group experiments with making their presentation like a play, while another offers a more deadpan academic style, a bit book-reportish for my taste. The biggest problems most face are rooted in a natural bashfulness: voice projection (in spite of having a microphone!) and developing a physical presence. Mary’s workshop helped but these students are clearly out of their comfort zone, which is not a bad thing. The audience receives the material in the spirit it was presented, and we get individual complements and useful feedback in the post-performance reception.

Because I was the emcee, I did not have an opportunity to document the proceedings, but here we can see some of the media assets that were used to create the event:

“Mural” Images

Primary Slideshows

Soundscape Elements

Amusement Park

Arcade

Victor Herbert Orchestra – 1911 – Naughty Marietta

Success! We’ve scored an important notch in our belt, so now it’s off to celebrate and socialize with my Dundee colleagues. However — and there always seems to be a however — a student comes up to me with a finger he has somehow injured and says he needs to go to the hospitaI. I’m the leader so it falls to me. I take a reluctant rain check with my colleagues to tend to this issue. We end up at a Tesco looking for a finger splint — his ego seems bruised more than his finger, and it can move albeit with pain, so thankfully he’s decided against trekking to the hospital.

After walking the student back to the hotel and tending to the finger, I am famished and it is very late for a meal. I have to admit to no small measure of annoyance with a situation that had kept me apart from socializing with colleagues I had not seen since the Before Times. I text Stephen to find out where anyone has landed. He says come on over to the Innis and Gunn Taproom, which happens to be a favorite of mine. It it past 9:30 and the kitchen has closed, but they can manage to supply a dinner of a crispy chicken sandwich and chips (fries to us Yanks). I wash this down with a sampling of two different IPA drafts. We walk back high and dry to the Apex, happy that our big mission is complete.

Thus concluding our time in Dundee, tomorrow it’s off to Aberdeenshire and another, more personal, big mission…