Review: Art + Information is an exciting three-course meal
Directed by Kate Gaul, Scholars/performers Beth Yahp, Tara Murphy and Mitchell Gibbs
Review by Ceridwen Bush
I love to talk about artsifying the sciences, and with enough crafty pretense I can even be tricked into doing maths. I can be sucked into learning about anything. I won't necessarily understand everything, but I will absolutely binge on interesting things when they are told in an exciting way. This is part of the reason why my HECS debt is so high. Art + Information, “where art brings big ideas to life”, is a short anthology of performance lectures that offers exactly the kind of deceit to get me interested.
The sole performers are three scholars: Beth Yahp, author and Creative Writing lecturer, Tara Murphy, Professor of Astrophysics, and Mitchell Gibbs, postdoctoral researcher in the School of Geosciences. Each has 30 minutes to stage their academic ventures in a novel collaboration of creativity and science, with the help of independent theatre director Kate Gaul. It feels a little out of sync, but is nevertheless an excellent step towards a future that values the collaboration of art and science.
At the show’s entrance, the doorkeeper handed me a pencil and piece of cardboard:
“There’s going to be time to answer a question during the show, but there is no pressure to participate,”
I tell her that I love activities, of course I’ll do it! It didn’t matter of course, and she moved on to the next attendee.
When Beth walks on stage, the theatre feels big and warm. Hanging above her are a bouquet of golden light bulbs, and she weaves through three pedestals. They’re black and nondescript, and they feel like they could have played a symbolic role for all three scholars. She refers to each of them as she tells the stories of three “objects” in her life and the ‘Simple Pleasures’ they bring.
Beth asks us to write about an object that brings us pleasure. She asks us to “reach” for it, to consider how it feels, the meaning of its space. Like the doorkeeper, I don't know what to do with this enthusiasm. I can’t remember a single item in my house and draw a beetle. Her pedestals leave the stage with her. They never return, and any significance they might have had dissolves.
In the second act, Tara enters with a dramatic change of pace. She stands centre stage, staring into the lights above her. The bulbs begin to flash in a spinning motion, their spiral effect intensified by a squealing vortexual sound. Faster and faster until — ‘Exploding Stars’! Tara recounts recording the GW170817 gravitational wave, a byproduct of a stellar collision. This exciting story is one of the hugeness of the universe, unimaginable maths, and the fervent “hivemind” of academia.
Tara is the kind of person I want to be when I grow up. Career wise I am much more likely to write a moon landing conspiracy than I am to be an astrophysicist. Rather, Tara is a brilliant, passionate nerd who has the ability to make uncomprehendingly complex concepts into digestible tales of the space-time continuum.
In ‘The Humble Oyster’, Mitchell tells us about so much more than just his PhD research. He weaves between stories of his family, the 2019 bushfires, and the amount of work it takes to make oysters spawn. As a Thunghutti man, Mitchell seeks to cement the wealth of Indigenous knowledge into academia. Mitchell is a gifted storyteller with a gentle temperament. By the end of his performance, he feels like an old friend. He excitedly tells the audience that his PhD hypothesis was wrong — like he’s been waiting until we were finally close enough to tell us a secret.
The creative team behind the lighting and video (Morgan Moroney) and sound design (Zac Saric) worked in a subtle tandem. The use of video projection was sparse but effective. For Tara, it acted as a punchline to her cracks about the titles of academic articles. Later, it featured Mitchell’s brother as he surveyed the blistered wreckage of their childhood home.
A signature tune played throughout the presenters, often signposting sentimental moments of personal stories. The twee melody felt more “TED talk” than theatrical, but allowed for a flowing connection between the pieces. As a marker between pieces it veered into feeling repetitive, but the addition of bird sounds during Mitchell’s performance gave some charming variation.
If you ask a scientist what drew them to their field you will be answered with genuine love. They excitedly tell you how cute sea lice are, chaotically draw pictures of chemical reactions, or tell you what kind of rocks you can put in your mouth. An unfiltered, absurd obsession is the unifying quality of artists and scientists.
However, Art + Information doesn’t feel completely harmonious. There is a noticeable wedge between the first performance and the later two. Beth performs ‘Simple Pleasures’ like a slam poem, rather than a lecture. She is clearly an excellent writer, but the memoir nature of the piece was jarring against the more academic ones to follow. It was very much art plus information. Art and then information. It seems the collaboration is finding its feet, but at least the schools are finally seeing their commonalities.
Nonetheless, I think that all the nerds deserve a stage and I will engorge on whatever special information they can feed me. Art + Information is an exciting three-course meal, but the restaurant serving it is still working on their combos.
Art + Information is playing at the Seymour Centre’s Reginald Theatre until 26 November. Find tickets here.
Images by Jacquie Manning
Ceridwen loves things that are disgusting. She talks really fast and doesn’t mind a space balloon in the park. Find her ranting and raving on Instagram @scrridwen.
We paid Ceridwen $25 for this review.
Like this review? Buy us a $5 coffee here. You can do it once, once a month or as many times as you like.
