Science, performance and transformation: performance for a ‘scientific’ age?

Abstract

The ‘two cultures’ of science and the arts/humanities are often considered at odds, but digital technology, and the broader implications of digital culture, provides a model for more productive forms of exchange and hybridity. This article applies theories of intercultural theatre practice to performance that works across this cultural divide to explore the types of interaction that take place. Following a historical discussion of the science/art divide, a three-fold model is proposed and explored through case studies including Djerassi and Laszlo's 2003 NO, Eduardo Kac's 1999 Genesis, Reckless Sleepers' 1996/2006 Schrödinger's Box, and John Barrow's 2002 Infinities. It is argued that science operates through the creation of mathematical models of aspects of the physical world, whilst art similarly constructs different kinds of models for understanding the social/cultural and occasionally physical world. Digital technology expands the modelling possibilities both directly, through simulation, virtual reality and integration into ‘live’ activities of augmented and intermedia performance, and through the transformative nature of digital culture.

Keywords:

• science theatre
• intercultural theory
• Eduardo Kac
• Reckless Sleepers
• John Barrow
• Carl Djerassi

Introduction

Digital technology is an essential part of almost all cultural activity; in the Performance Arts this ranges from explicit use in digital performance to the more concealed use in lighting and sound design and operation. Similarly, from computational mathematics to data analysis to digital imaging, the practice of science and its application through various tools has been transformed by digital technology. Since C. P. Snow's (in)famous 1959 lecture, the division of the ‘two cultures’ of the arts/humanities and sciences has been challenged through numerous collaborations and experiments, and the use of digital technology in arts/science practices has resulted in a far more complex variety of practices. Intercultural performance theory can be used as a framework for exploring how, through digital media, exchange occurs between these two cultures.

It is worth considering the historical context that has shaped these contemporary practices. Thirty years before Snow's lecture, in 1929, as Brecht was calling for a theatre of the scientific age, the experimental and theoretical developments of quantum mechanics were taking place. These developments underpin most of the digital computing, imaging, communication and storage technology that have shaped science and art into the twenty first century, as well as the performance interactions between them. As Matthew Causey argues, ‘the technological advances in the screened technologies of new media and computer environments’ has caused profound changes in ‘material and metaphysical conditions’, which have challenged how theatre and performance operate (2006, 2). Johannes Birringer similarly writes about a ‘present reality of techno-cultural shifts that have taken place and turned the digital into a mainstream phenomenon’ (2008, xii). In recent years the increasing range of academic work exploring the representation of science in and through performance shows how science and technology (often conflated) can influence artistic processes.

This article makes use of theories of intercultural performance theories to explore if and how the ‘two cultures’ of science and performance interact in practice. I propose three main categories for considering how science performance work operates in relation to developments in digital culture: science in performance; performance through science; and science/performance transformation. Although performance working across science and art can often seem to rely on the ‘spectacle’ of science in either content or form (harking back to the ‘scientific experiment as performance’ of the nineteenth century, and arguably the representation of programmes such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN), I argue that there is the potential for a genuine revolution in understanding through what I term ‘science/performance transformation’. Examples from a range of recent performance practices that engage with digital performance are used to develop these ideas, engaging with genetics, quantum physics, biochemistry and mathematics. How digital media is used in live performance is explored, as well as how live performance is shaped by digital culture.

The Two Cultures

Snow's The Two Cultures sets the scene for much of the subsequent developments between science and arts, and was part of a developing concern that the scientific exploration of nature could no longer be considered part of ‘the all-embracing enterprise of philosophy’ (1998, ix–x). Over the twentieth century, the ability of people to maintain an understanding of these various domains became increasingly under threat because of increasing specialisation. The use of digital technologies in science, such as large-scale computer modelling or statistical analysis, provides a further barrier because there is a tendency for these to be treated as a black box, without the possibility of an intelligible demonstration of how results are obtained.

The key point that Snow makes in The Two Cultures is that ‘the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had’ (1998, 15). Snow, who had trained and worked briefly as a scientist, and was a successful novelist, argued that the specialisation of education in England in the first half of twentieth century produced incompatible literary and scientific cultures that were unable to communicate with each other, and not even interested in trying to. This separation turning to conflict between the sciences and humanities continues, with a view presented that scholars:

in the Humanities continue to feel the economic and institutional sting of Science […]. While the sciences and their technologies, proliferating wildly, seem to assimilate more and more of our social, economic, ecological, and aesthetic reserves, they have also increasingly withdrawn into their own specialized styles of articulation, consorting exclusively with their chosen forms of so-called facts and figures and actively rejecting any ‘humanistic’ tracking of their ideas as ‘uninformed’. (Case 2007, 1)

Similar viewpoints have been put forward by scientists involved in theatre, stating that it ‘is recognised universally that the gulf between the sciences and the other cultural worlds of the humanities and social sciences is increasingly widening and that any attempt to narrow it should be welcomed’ (Djerassi and Laszlo 2003, 63).

Kirsten Shepherd-Barr observes in Science on Stage that at about the same time as Snow, the pioneering British theatre scholar Glynne Wickham delivered his own thoughts on the two cultures, noting that ‘arts graduates know even less about science than science students do about art’ (Shepherd-Barr 2006, 13). Wickham saw drama as having a particular ‘integrating power’ that can ‘provide the arts man [sic] with a lively introduction to scientific thinking and the scientist with as lively a reflection of his own human condition’ (Wickham 1962, 56). The use of digital media in performance perhaps offers an equivalent integrating opportunity for the twenty-first century as Wickham saw drama offering in the twentieth century, through its ability to supersede ‘conventional forms of narrative explanation, visualization, and comprehension’ (Vanden Heuval 2013, 376).

Beginning with Brecht

Brecht is often held in a foundational position in the discussion of science and theatre; Shepherd-Barr argues that any ‘discussion of science plays must include quite centrally Brecht's Life of Galileo’, describing the play as ‘a watershed in the development of ‘science plays’ (2006, 24). However, whilst Galileo raises interesting questions about the presentation of biography and history in relation to science and scientists, here I will use Brecht's theoretical writing to discuss why the performance arts and science are brought together specifically through digital media. Brecht was explicit in his call for a theatre for the scientific age, and wanted actors to act for ‘an audience of the scientific age’ (1964, 26). This was not necessarily to ‘see science in the theatre’, as in representations of science itself, but rather to see Theatre (1964, 27).

Whilst Brecht agreed that ‘Art and science work in quite different ways’, he felt that without an understanding of science, art was not able to fulfil its functions, whether those functions were political, or more personal (1964, 73). For Brecht, the ‘great and complicated things that go on in the world cannot be adequately recognized by people who do not use every possible aid to understanding’, and science was one of those aids to understanding (1964, 73). Digital technology can act as an aid to understanding in both arts and sciences, and as social, cultural and scientific life are now so shaped by these technologies, so they can be used to understand the interactions of these often divided worlds.

What is apparent is that the relationship between science and theatre that Brecht felt was important was not the one that that the naturalists of the nineteenth century had set forth. In the preface to the second edition of Thérèse Raquin (1868), Émile Zola claimed that his ‘objective was first and foremost a scientific one’ (1992, 2), and in the preface to the stage version of the latter he proposed that the ‘scientific spirit of the century will win over the theatre’ (1994, 70). For Brecht, these were ‘scientifically exact representations’ of ‘so-called naturalism’, not the acquisition of scientific knowledge that could be applied to create a better understanding of the world (1964, 179).

Writing in 1948, the changes in science and technology that had taken place since the late nineteenth century were identified by the then 58-year-old Brecht:

I who am writing this write it on a machine which at the time of my birth was unknown. I travel in the new vehicles with a rapidity that my grandfather could not imagine; in those days nothing moved so fast. And I rise in the air: a thing my father was unable to do. With my father I already spoke across the width of a continent, but it was together with my son that I first saw the moving pictures of the explosion at Hiroshima. (Brecht 1964, 184)

Whilst Brecht identifies primarily technological developments, the pace of scientific change across the twentieth century has been equally rapid. As Roger Penrose observes:

one of the remarkable things about the behaviour of the world is how it seems to be grounded in mathematics to a quite extraordinary degree of accuracy. The more we understand about the physical world … the more it seems as though the physical world almost evaporates and we are left only with mathematics. (Penrose 1997, 3)

Digital technology has often been conceived of in this way, the ‘Digital Rain’ of code in the Matrix films an illustration of this, but there is a significant challenge for art engaging with the underlying mathematical material, rather than just layering another type of representation upon the scientific understanding of reality. Whilst mathematicians have been the subject of a number of theatre works (Auburn's Proof in 2000; Complicite's A Disappearing Number in 2007), employing mathematics in any meaningful way is far more challenging for performance, although works such as X&Y, which I discuss in more detail below, have attempted this. What science provides is the means (through the complicated and complex nexus of theories and experiments) for understanding how mathematical models relate to the physical world, and performance provides models (through the complex connections between production and reception) for understanding the world; the cultural and social world. Furthermore, digital media provides the ability to model the physical, cultural and social worlds in new and profoundly revolutionary ways, and these new ways then impact on all forms of subsequent practice.

Performance and the digital: performance and science

As Nicola Shaughnessy observes, there are a range of companies producing ‘work variously exploring the interface between the live and the virtual, the real and cyber performance whilst also exploring the potential of interactivity as a means of engaging spectators as players in the production of meaning’ (2012, 160). Whilst digital media is clearly dependent upon scientific advances for its technical development (such as the quantum mechanical properties of semiconductors for integrated circuits or lasers for reading DVDs), there is no a priori reason that digital performance should engage with science any more than any other form of performance. Indeed, there is perhaps a trend in science-theatre that leans towards plays that ‘are groundbreaking in their use of science but rather mainstream in their theatricality’ (Shepherd-Barr 2006, 199). However, the permeation of culture by digital media has resulted in the possibility for a transformation of all performance, whether it is mediated through digital media entirely, partially or not at all. For the participatory digital work that Shaughnessy analyses, ‘rather than art representing life, young people draw upon mediated versions of the real in their imaginative and creative acts. New technologies are needed to represent new realities’ (Shaughnessy 2012, 163). In addition, the new technologies that exist outside of the theatrical frame condition the expectation of work within the theatrical frame. As Matthew Causey argues, there is a fragmentation of the subject that can occur in videated performance art, and the:

presence of the televisual in contemporary theatre has a similar effect. The televisual in performance, not unlike the Cubist rethinking of representational space on canvas, acts as an agent of transformation, altering the manner in which we represent and look at narrativity, subjectivity, spatiality and temporal images. (Causey 2006, 38)

Marcus du Sautoy and Victoria Gould created the mathematical play X&Y (2013), which was performed for the Science Museum, London and the Manchester Science Festival. du Sautoy, a professional mathematician, makes explicit the connection between theatre, mathematics and digital media, stating that both he and Gould ‘have this belief that theatre and mathematics have a lot in common, they are very much about creating abstract worlds’ (du Sautoy and Gould 2013). These abstract worlds consist of ‘setting up some rules which you then follow through the consequences’, and for X&Y the whole play is almost like ‘a mathematical proof’ (du Sautoy and Gould 2013). In the post-show notes from the performance, du Sautoy makes the link between the fictional space created in the play, and:

the computer game Asteroids [where] the universe consists of the finite computer screen, but this finite universe has no walls. If you travel off the top of the screen you reappear at the bottom. Head off at the left and you reappear at the right. (du Sautoy 2013)

The ‘world building’ through models that takes place in theatre and in science also takes place both in and through digital media.

The key thought linking performance, science and digital media is given by Sue-Ellen Case, for whom both:

the laboratory and the stage construct a space that is organized as alternative to the ubiquitous, pedestrian realm […] both theatre and science have deployed notions of the virtual and its avatar that are as old as The Upanishads and as new as cyberspace and online avatars. (Case 2007, 4)

Intercultural science and art

When discussing performance work that tries to operate at the intersection of the two cultures of art and science, there is an existing body of theoretical work that can help in understanding these interactions. There is the possibility that a greater understanding of the interaction between the ‘two cultures’ can be developed through the application of these intercultural performance theories, such as those developed by Patrice Pavis, whose object of study is ‘the crossroads of cultures in contemporary theatre practice’ (Pavis 2004, 1). Whilst Pavis explores performance work that brings together foreign cultures and varying artistic practices, the ideas developed can be applied to performance work where the two cultures of science and arts are brought together.

The key theoretical construction that will be used here is the hourglass model of exchange. Pavis describes the hourglass as ‘reminiscent of a funnel and a mill’, wherein:

the upper bowl is the foreign culture, the source culture [and] to reach us, this culture must pass through a narrow neck. If the grains of culture or their conglomerate are sufficiently fine, they will flow through without any trouble, however slowly, into the lower bowl, that of the target culture, from which point we observe this slow flow; The grains will rearrange themselves in a way which appears random, but which is partly regulated by their passage through some dozen filters put in place by the target culture and the observer. (Pavis 2004, 4)

Pavis observes that if the hourglass operates only as a mill, the source culture will lose any specificity; whilst if it is only a funnel, then it will not reshape the initial substance into the new culture. The types of filter that Pavis discusses are the perspective of the adapters, the preparatory work of the actors, the choice of theatrical form, and so on, to the particular reception in the target culture. This final reception is key for Pavis, for after:

the sand has filtered from one bowl of the hourglass to the other, the spectators are the final and only guarantors of the culture which reaches them, whether it be foreign or familiar. Once the performance is complete, all the sand rests on the spectator's frail shoulders. (Pavis 2004, 18)

Critics of this hourglass model have questioned its use in the analysis of intercultural performance practices; for Jacqueline Lo and Helen Gilbert ‘it assumes a one-way cultural flow based on a hierarchy of privilege’ that ‘ultimately reduces intercultural exchange to an alimentary process’ (2002, 42–43). When the hourglass model is applied to an arts/science context these criticisms may be less relevant, however the one-way flow may still exist. Simply put, there are numerous examples where an aspect of science is the content of a work of art, but it is perhaps less clear what it would mean for a work of art to be the content of science.

Pavis issues a warning that is particularly relevant for work across the two cultures divide, cautioning that:

Choosing a theatrical form involves choosing a type of theatricality, a status of the fiction vis-à-vis reality. Theatricality offers specific means for transferring a source culture to a target audience: only in this context can we speak of a theatrical interculturalism. We may certainly doubt whether culture can really be represented by theatrical means or even performed. Perhaps only the most external and superficial features of culture can be represented; in any case, we must look for specific theatrical means to express or perform this (foreign) culture. (Pavis 2004, 194)

Whether the specific theatrical means chosen to represent science can avoid the most external or superficial features being represented is the question that the following case studies will try to address.

Intersections

I suggest that there are three main ways in which science and performance intersect: science in performance; performance through science; and science/performance transformation. These categories are not new. Carl Djerassi writes of his work as science-in-theatre (Djerassi 2002), but considering them together allows for an understanding of the different ways in which the intercultural hourglass processes these interactions between science and performance (in Pavis’ terms) and how they can act as possible aids to understanding (in Brecht's terms). I have selected Eduardo Kac's 1999 Genesis, Reckless Sleepers’ 1996/2006 Schrödinger's Box, John Barrow's 2002 Infinities, and Djerassi and Laszlo's 2003 NO as case studies to illustrate these potential interactions. I have chosen these because they represent a diversity of performance practices (plays, performances, participatory artworks) and creative partnerships (artists, scientists working with artists, scientists turned artists, ‘biological artist’) and also because they illustrate the ways that science and art can interact in performance.

Science in performance

NO was written by Carl Djerassi and Pierre Laszlo, both Emeritus Professors of Chemistry, as a work to be performed in school or university classrooms. As the authors acknowledge, ‘people go to the theatre to be entertained and any pedagogic motive must be downplayed, if not totally hidden, to ensure that such plays are accepted on their theatrical merits’ (Djerassi and Laszlo 2003, 63). However, NO is a deliberately much more didactic presentation of scientific material, in this case the chemical and biological role of nitric oxide, told through a research grant discussion between two scientists (Dr A and Dr B) and a venture capitalist (Mr VC). The authors’ expressed hope is to ‘illuminate, however briefly, the complexity and wonder of much of contemporary research’, and it is written with consideration of the technical limitations of being performed in a classroom, with the performance limitations of untrained and unrehearsed actors (Djerassi and Laszlo 2003, 65). The published script includes a CD-ROM of 24 slides to be projected during the performance, including the chemical structures involved in processes in which nitric oxide plays a key part, such as the effect of Viagra. Whilst this incorporates digital media into the live performance, there is very little interaction between the two; the projected images are static slides that merely illustrate the scientific material being discussed in the play. There is very little opportunity for transformation here; rather, the material is presented by experts (Dr A and Dr B) to the audience, who are assumed to lack knowledge and are represented by Mr VC. Here the mill operates merely as a funnel, and there is no transformation of the material or, arguably, the understanding of the audience.

In response to arguments put forward by Carl Djerassi, Michael Vanden Heuval observes how in the conventional science play he is often ‘struck by the conventional storytelling, the overt literariness of the styles and themes and, consequently, the relationship they establish with the putative spectator’ (Vanden Heuval 2013, 366). Whilst there may be a clear and direct engagement with science in the content of this science-in-theatre, and, as discussed above, whilst Djerassi and Laszlo might wish to cast light onto the manifold joys of scientific research, without a productive engagement between the content and form, then the effectiveness of the performance is reduced when ‘the essential mediality of theatre, theatre as a specific mode of communication and expressiveness related to, but also distinct from, other media, [is] repressed’ (Vanden Heuval 2013, 366). Here we see the consequences of the hourglass operating only as a funnel; the material remains insufficiently transformed and so not shaped into a new culture. For Vanden Heuval, in performances that make use of enhanced intermediality:

the multiple levels of creating meaning are not only sustained but interfere and resonate with one another, producing not just complicated but ‘complex’ and potentially emergent patterns of meaning co-created by the active spectator. (Vanden Heuval 2013, 375)

Without the processing that takes place when the hourglass operates as a mill, there is no opportunity for the spectator to develop understanding or a meaningful relationship with the scientific content: instead, they can only act as passive recipients.

Performance through science

The second category is that of performance through science. As mentioned earlier, whilst almost all performance depends on or makes use of scientific and technological developments in its realisation, for performance through science the work is entirely dependent on a scientific process or procedure for its particular form, and here Brazilian artist Eduardo Kac's 1999 work Genesis is most helpful in this respect. Kac's work directly engages with scientific processes, such as genetic modification to create transgenic art. Kac's work is not presented as a collaboration with scientists (although there are occasional references in the writing of others about Kac's work to ‘scientific collaborators’) but as art that could only be created through these scientific processes; transgenic art is not altered through the application of scientific processes, but exists only through these processes.

Causey has analysed Kac's work in some depth, positioning it as ‘a performance of the posthuman’ (Causey 2006, 132). He argues that the idea of the posthuman fundamentally changes the nature of body and consciousness, as the technological means for viewing, mapping and changing the body has rapidly and radically changed both our understanding of and ability to alter ourselves (2006, 52–53).

In Genesis the human body is not reconfigured; rather, through technology, humans are able to rewrite life at a distance. Kac describes the work as exploring ‘the intricate relationship between biology, belief systems, information technology, dialogical interaction, ethics, and the Internet’ (Kac n.d.). It has at its conceptual heart what Kac (n.d.) terms the ‘artist's gene […] created by translating a sentence from the biblical book of Genesis into Morse Code, and converting the Morse Code into DNA base pairs’. The sentence reads ‘Let man have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth’, which Kac (n.d.) asserts was chosen ‘for its implications regarding the dubious notion of (divinely sanctioned) humanity's supremacy over nature’. This gene is then inserted into Escherichia coli bacteria, which then form the centrepiece of the artwork.

The modified E. coli, which are also genetically altered for enhanced cyan fluorescence (that causes them to glow greenish-blue), are mixed with E. coli similarly enhanced for yellow florescence, and both are then subjected to ultraviolet light (switched off and on by spectators via a website), which will not only produce the fluorescence but also increases the chance of genetic mutations. Real-time images of these modified bacteria from a microvideo camera are projected and the ‘left and right walls contain large-scale texts applied directly on the wall: the sentence extracted from the book of Genesis (right) and the Genesis gene (left)’ (Kac n.d.). Without the scientific processes, such as the cloning of the synthetic gene into plasmids, and the subsequent incorporation of those plasmids into the bacteria, the starting point for the artwork could not exist. Following this, the action of the spectators upon the bacteria, via the Internet, then causes not only short-term florescence but also genetic mutation, changing the text inscribed into the DNA of the bacteria. At the ‘end of the show the altered biblical sentence is decoded and read back in plain English,¹ offering insights into the process of transgenic interbacterial communication’ (Kac n.d.). The new text is written out, altered and revisited through scientific processes, and these processes become the artwork.

For Causey, Genesis both describes and is shaped by the posthuman:

Transgenic art exercises the artist's ability not simply to create the object of art, but to actually create the subject within art. The boundaries of art and science are traversed with unsettling ethical dilemmas. Who has the right to create new life? Who takes responsibility for the results? What are the final results? (Causey 2006, 130–131)

Whilst Genesis clearly brings together art and science, the hourglass here operates as a mill, and the specificity of the source culture is lost. Whilst Genesis might be aesthetically effective, and might, as Causey notes, raise some profound questions, it does not provide the audience with any tools for answering them. Furthermore, the specific rewriting of the Genesis text provides no additional aesthetic or scientific meaning other than it having taken place. There is no emergent meaning that can be taken from the exact rewriting, coming as it does from random genetic mutations. Whilst the spectator might be amazed by the ability to code text within bacterial DNA, within the piece itself there does not appear to be a transformation of the spectators’ understanding of those wonders. In Brecht's terms again, it does not aid understanding of science.

Science/performance transformation

Whilst the first two case studies have engaged directly with digital technology to different degrees of integration, the final case studies are instead shaped by the modelling principles of digital media. As discussed above, digital media both shares with and shapes the defining features of performance. This includes the ‘transformative nature of performance, the power to reorder all that enters its sphere (whether text, subjectivity or ideology)’, which might also seem to be the key feature of digital media (Causey 2006, 56).

Reckless Sleepers’ work Schrödinger's Box (re-worked and re-titled Schrödinger in 2011) directly refers to the quantum mechanical thought experiment, where a dead/alive cat in a box illustrates a paradox: how the micro (quantum mechanical) and macro worlds can interact in a way that is consistent with observations in both realms. Erwin Schrödinger's original 1935 thought experiment consisted of a cat in a box with a radioactive source, a vial of poison, and a device that will break the vial and release the poison if it detects radiation, killing the cat. In the everyday macro world, to an observer looking into the box the radioactive source would either decay and release radiation, or not; so the poison vial would be broken, or not; resulting in the death of the cat, or not. Radioactive decay is a stochastic process such that for individual atoms it is impossible to know whether they will decay or not over a given time, but for a large number of atoms there is a constant rate of decay over time. Under the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, until observed, quantum systems (such as the radioactive particle) exist as a superposition of states, probabilistically combining the decayed and non-decayed states; the act of observation collapses the wave function into either decayed radioactive source or non-decayed radioactive source. Whilst this delayed collapse might be philosophically acceptable in an atom, it is much harder to accept or even understand what it would mean for a cat (or person) to be in a quantum superposition of both alive and dead.

Andrew Brown observes that Schrödinger's Box is presented as playful space despite all the struggles that are apparently faced within, where ‘Childlike scientists conduct experiments on virtual cats, much as cats play with mice’ (Brown, Wetherall, and Reckless Sleepers 2007, 44).

The title might produce an expectation of an elucidation of scientific theory, and as Reckless Sleepers’ artistic director Mole Wetherell recounts:

I think in some circles we were criticized for not explaining Quantum Theory. I'd like to say that we tried to make sense of it […] we do explain these concepts, albeit not in a classical way, such as a lecture demonstration. (Brown, Wetherall, and Reckless Sleepers 2007, 7)

Shaughnessy, in the introduction to Affective Performance and Cognitive Science: Body, Brain and Being, argues that the black box of Schrödinger is a metaphor for both cognitive science and performance, and that digital technology, through the cognitive revolution of the 1970s, became a key way of understanding cognition (2013, 5). Schrödinger is, Shaughnessy argues, ‘a production in which we see, simultaneously, theatre staging science, performance processes exploring scientific concepts and an “affective” aesthetic’ (2013, 13). The combined effect of these three operations is to produce theatre that transforms understanding through ‘a different kind of knowledge’ that combines ‘intellectual understanding and intuition’ (2013, 16). If science through mathematical models provides a different way of seeing the world, much as digital media provides different ways for organising and visualising information, then this combined understanding is what is required for a transformed understanding through performance. Here a transformed understanding is achieved through an integration of showing and feeling, but not through a development of technical knowledge of quantum mechanics.

The closing sequence of the performance provides an example of this combined understanding. Through the piece, the walls of the box are covered ‘in a confusion of text and image, bewildering with potential interpretations’ (Brown, Wetherall, and Reckless Sleepers 2007, 44). Then, as Brown describes:

In the closing sequence […] it appears to be raining inside the set. The introduction of cold water delivered from above by means of watering cans creates a genuine shock for the performers. They are affected to the extent that it becomes impossible for them to continue and they literally have to catch their breath. […] The performance/experiment concludes with the performers emerging, all soaked to the skin. They stand, looking back into the box, as if the original scientists surveying their handiwork as if to say ‘What have we done?’. (Brown, Wetherall, and Reckless Sleepers 2007, 83)

Schrödinger provides a series of models, such as the use of contacts between people and objects, or simultaneous actions, which transforms ideas from twentieth-century physics into actions through the process of performance-making. Whilst it might not be a piece about quantum mechanics, watching it gives as good a feeling for quantum mechanics as can be achieved without understanding the complex mathematics. The hourglass transforms the material into a new structure, which keeps a vital aspect of its original form.

By way of a conclusion, Infinities – directed by Luca Ronconi and written by theoretical physicist John D. Barrow – does not try to show scientific processes or portray scientists, nor is the performance mediated by scientific methods. What Infinities does is convey to the non-mathematician the beauty of mathematics and the way in which mathematics can change thought. Shepherd-Barr describes Infinities as staging:

‘some of the great paradoxes’ or ‘thought experiments’ about infinity: the Hotel Infinity in all its vastness, the notion of time travel, the idea of living forever, Borges's library of Babel with its endless corridors of books […] Infinities brings such concepts to life in a stunning combination of mathematics, philosophy, science, and theatricality. (Shepherd-Barr 2006, 149)

Shepherd-Barr goes on to argue that the ‘play demonstrates the very concepts it deals with and takes the genre of “science play” to a new level […] deliberately [rejecting] such mainstays of traditional theater as plot and characterisation’ (2006, 150). The ideas of infinity are explored in Infinities without a particular use of digital technology; instead, for example, Hilbert's Hotel, which can always accommodate a number of new guests, took place in the warehouse where the backdrops for operas at La Scala are painted:

The warehouse has a huge wall with hundreds of doors through which set designers emerge to paint the backdrops hung against the wall. Remove the backdrop and what you have is Hilbert's Hotel: endless doors lining the wall stretching into the rafters of the warehouse. (du Sautoy 2003, 12)

As Vanden Heuval argues, whilst performance can allow for multiplicity of perspectives:

Science-in-theatre renders invisible these multiple acts of representation because rather than foregrounding the perception of bodies ‘present’ – which are also being ‘presented’ as signs even as these are part of a larger ‘representation’ or narrative – didactic realism of the sort Djerassi prefers collapses everything into the single layer of narrative representation, of mimesis. (Vanden Heuval 2013, 374–375)

Performances such as Schrödinger and Infinities produce multiple layers of meaning, a multitude of ways of reading, although not through a singular naturalistic dramatic narrative. As mathematics underpins reality, so the science underpins these productions, although not necessarily described or explained through them. The ephemeral qualities of performance allow for a more subtle exploration of a range of ways of experiencing infinity, or the collapse of the quantum mechanical waveform.

Infinities allows the audience to take the sand that comes through the hourglass upon their shoulders and make meaning from the multiplicities that are presented to them. The audience will not come away from the performance with a single shared understanding of infinity – this is not the performance equivalent of ‘teaching to the test’. Instead, the piece operates as a model of infinity, which aids our understanding of both mathematics and how mathematics relates to what it means to be human.

The ‘two cultures’ may still exist; but there are frequent travellers between them. Digital technology has shaped both cultures and can be used, directly and indirectly, to build models that aid an understanding of both. The work that perhaps most successfully builds bridges between the ‘two cultures’ creates models that can be interacted or experienced in a range of ways. This interactive model clearly reflects aspects of digital culture, and an integration of form and content. Rather than the predetermined and linear experience or exchange when science is communicated through performance, or performance is mediated through science, when performance has a transformative effect on understanding then it can achieve the Brechtian ‘aid to understanding’ of what it is to be human in a world underpinned by mathematics, understood through science and visualised through digital technology. Whilst I am not providing a methodology for performance that sits across the two cultures, what seems key to forming a bridge between the two is for neither to be utilised in the service of the other, but for the multiplicity of readings possible in performance to enable a transformative experience.

Notes on contributors

Paul Johnson is Head of the Department of Drama and Musical Theatre at the University of Wolverhampton, UK and leads the Creative Processes in the Performing Arts research cluster. His book Quantum Theatre: Science and Contemporary Performance was published in 2012, and he has also written on performance and philosophy and performance in museums and heritage sites.

Notes

1. The translation of the mutated gene reads as follows: ‘LET AAN HAVE DOMINION OVER THE FISH OF THE SEA AND OVER THE FOWL OF THE AIR AND OVER EVERY LIVING THING THAT IOVES UA EON THE EARTH’.