Welcome to this rather special event in the Oxford Mathematics Public Lecture Series, in collaboration with Faber members to mark the publication of a play, AI is a strangely that I've been working on in collaboration with actress Victoria Gould. We're going to be joined by Simon McBurney, the founder of Complicity, for a three way conversation between all of us. But before that, we're going to join the audience at the Oxford Playhouse for a screening of a performance of AI is a strange loop.
I mean. Why? Why? Why? Oh, one. One. One. Y equals one, y equals one. Y equals one. Multiply by. Y squared equals y. Take one. Y squared minus one equals y minus one. Factories. Why minus one times, why plus one equals y minus one? Cancel. Why plus one equals one? Therefore, y equals. Y equals zero.
Hawaii doesn't exist. Identify why quantify one y equals one y equals one multiplied by y y squared equals y take one y squared minus one equals y minus one right y minus one times y plus one equals y minus one y plus one equals one. Therefore, y equals zero. Therefore, y doesn't exist. You can't divide by zero. Do. Identify. X. Quantify one unique. So X equals one, X equals one. Multiplied by yourself, x squared equals x differentiate with respect to yourself.
Oh, two x equals one. Therefore X equals equals a ha ha. Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh. Raise yourself to the power of Oh oh no, no, no, no, no. Oh zeros. Oh oh oh. X equals one. Oh oh oh. X x equals one. O X equals one. X X equals one. But you can't differentiates with respect to a constant. Identify the coordinates of your origin. There is the hair clip and the conjectural coordinates when your velocity vector hits zero.
Out, out, out. Oh yes, out. How? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh. Oh, and define your terms. Oh, way out. This can't be all, there is a long line of rooms. Rooms. Yes. Rooms. Well, you've just created a singularity outside of my cube. Oh no. Oh. Oh. There exists.
Another room and another room and another one and another one, they're all the same, it's room after room after room, an infinite number of rooms. No, I didn't say it was infinite. I said it's room after room after room. No, no. I think I can prove that it's infinite, really, how induction induction let pen be the inductive hypothesis that there are any rooms in this line that any one, my room exists. Therefore, p one is true. Well, that's the base step. Now suppose that p n is true.
Well, I exit to find another room. I see Morphic to the room, therefore. And plus one is true. Well, that's the inductive step. Well, now apply the second order axiom of inductive logic for the natural numbers to prove that p n is true for all, and therefore the line of rooms is infinite. O quarterbacks demonstrating them? Yes, yes, but if it's infinite, then there's no way out. Well, there is no. Oh no, there must be something else. This can't be all very well.
The manifold needs no ambient space to exist. It's just a room after room. After room after room, she fell to room for. It's. It's it's an x squared plus y squared plus x graphic was all sweat. It's an orange orange sphere. Yes. An orange sphere. Oh, the orange sphere is establishing a functional relationship with my nose. Oh, oh. Segment of the orange sphere has become embedded as a subset of why. Who? Mm-Hmm. Hmm. Whoa, oh, oh, no. Oh. Well. Mm hmm.
Well. Or. Oh, redefined the origin of your orange sphere using the following equation X minus 14 squared plus y minus 14 squared plus two square off squared. But it's minus 14 squared plus y minus 14 squared plus six plus two squared equals all squared. One. One oh, one, oh, one oh, one oh one, oh, oh, oh, oh oh. One. One oh, one, oh, another one, one, two, three lots.
Yes. Oh oh, the origin of the orange sphere should follow the following path defined by the equation Y equals z minus g divided by two z squared, which is the acceleration towards the floor. Oh, one, oh, one, oh, one, oh oh oh. I. One two, oh, one two one two oh one two one two, oh oh, another one one two three lots. Yes, ha ha. The origin of the orange sphere should follow the following path defined by the equation X equals each of the mind is sign t y equals each.
The minus 60 and Z equals 170. Watts is a parameter running from one to infinity. That's not physically possible. Well, it's a well defined function. It's not physically possible. Oh no. An approximation would be acceptable. The orange sphere conjecture, really? Oh, oh, oh. Oh, well, that's surprisingly small, Epsilon. Oh one. One oh, one one two three oh, one two three one two three one two three one two one two three oh, another one one two three. No. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh, an integer divider.
Multiplication investor. Disconnected space creator. A knife, the knife, a knife. Knife. Knife. Knife, huh? Nine, nine. Oh. Oh, one two three four oh, one two three four one two three four oh one two three. What are you doing? I'm physically using No. Well, I've cut this orange sphere into a half with your knife, and now I have one two three four pieces of orange smear. Oh, if I cut this piece in half again with your knife, then I will have one two three four five pieces of orange spear.
Well, if I apply the same inductive reasoning that proved the line of rooms was infinite, then after infinitely many cuts, I can have it pretty many pieces of art and spare. Oh, I'm afraid that's not physically possible. Well, it's going to take me some time. It would take you more than some time. Well, how much time it would take you an infinite amount of time. Oh, that is a long time, especially towards the end. Oh, you would have to spend the rest of time cutting that orange sphere.
Oh. What if? I cut one orange sphere into a half in. Eight seconds. And then I cut a half into a half in four seconds, and then I cut a quarter into a half in two seconds and an eighth into a half in one second. I think I have in the hopes of getting it through the door because if you look in the right, I can see the pattern. Oh, good, because you see, after infinitely many cuts, I will have infinitely many pieces of our sphere,
but it's not going to take me an infinite amount of time. Take me the song from any quiz minus three to infinity of two to the minus head. I can create infinity in 16 seconds. That's a lovely idea. Thank you. I'm afraid you won't be able to make it work in reality. Why not? Well, you'd have to keep cutting faster and faster, and eventually you'd be cutting so fast you'd hit the speed of light and nothing travels faster than the speed of light because speed is finite. No, I can do it. I can.
And space to you can't keep dividing space at some point you'll hit the atom, split that in your blow the whole place sky high. Oh no, it's going to work. The maths makes perfect sense. Do it, then really do it. I'll time. You cut that orange into infinitely many pieces in 16 seconds. I will. I shall. Typekit wash. I'm going to enjoy this infinity created before my very eyes, your hand moving faster than the speed of light. My knife becoming so sharp it'll be capable of splitting the atom.
Gosh, I better put on my safety goggles. Right. Fully prepared, what can go wrong? Are you ready? Yes. Pick up the knife. One Orange. 16 seconds to create infinity. Ready. Cut one. Two, three, four, five, six seven. Eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. Stop, stop cutting. Put down the knife. Step away from the orange. So you have created infinity. I didn't realise that equations were quite so sticky, but you have created infinity.
Whoa. Nearly. Oh, how far did you get on your way to creating infinity? One two three four five six seven seven. Well, I just need more practise, especially towards the end. I don't understand it. I can simply divide numbers up and add them all up. And why can't I do that to the orange sphere? Cause the orange is real, but infinity isn't. Infinity only exists in the imagination, not in real true life.
It does. No, it doesn't. Does, doesn't, doesn't, does, doesn't, does, doesn't, doesn't, does, doesn't give. Infinity doesn't exist. What's the biggest number then? Oh, the biggest number is 73 million and 12. What about 73 million and 13? Gosh, I was very close wolf. No, no, no, no, no. Don't run out it. But if it does exist. Come and sit down. We need to have a little chat. Well. Numbers are just in your mind. I mean, in your life, you only have a finite amount of time.
So there is only a finite number of numbers you will ever need. So for you and for me, they will be a biggest number. At some point in your life, you'll think of a number. And after that, you'll never think of a bigger one because you will die before you get the chance to die. Yes. Die. Your cells won't reproduce anymore. The telomeres in your chromosomes will get shorter and shorter until they're all used up. The last number. No more +1. The end of the line.
But that line has the potential to go on forever. Oh, potential. That's a marvellous idea, teeming with possibilities and forever. I think that's my favourite idea of all. They all lived happily ever after. No, I'm afraid you can prove to me that infinity is a lovely, consistent idea, but you'll never be able to show it to me. Take this space. It's all finite lines, starts here and it ends here, you're born there and you die there.
And this line of rooms to it has a beginning and an end. It's all finite. But there is infinity in this cube. Really, you promise you won't tell anybody. All right. Just before you arrived, I discovered Infiniti hiding in this cube. Really? Well, from there to there, that's a finite line. Oh no, no, no, sir, not sir. At the side of my cube has length. Why that's like me and the diagonal across the tube has length x, then X is bigger than Y. Mm hmm. By a factor of the square root of two.
And that's an irrational relationship, which is irrational, reenergized and rational. You calling a rational something rush about Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no x and Y are incompatible, incompatible. We've literally just met you, right? The square root of two as a decimal. Then it goes on to infinity, never repeating itself, so you won't be able to show it to me. No, I can't. I can. It starts one point four at one, a four.
You don't mind if I make myself comfortable, do you? What do you do? Yes, I've got a feeling we may be here for some time. Yeah. You will make sure once you that each step is ten times smaller than the one before. Yes, I know. I know, and I know, you know, but just so you know, your next three steps should be the size of a pollen grain, followed by a bacterium followed by a virus on a bacterium.
Oh, cool. One, three, very good, you got four, six decimal places over in infinity to go and you do know, don't you look after the 30 seconds will place, your step should be no bigger than a photon of light. OK. Five six. Oh oh, you're now about the size of a single coil of DNA. And of course, you won't be able to measure anything after the 34th decimal place because the planet constant is the smallest ruler that could possibly exist.
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh, you won't have trouble showing me, aren't you? Oh oh, never mind. Have a sandwich. Oh oh, oh oh oh no. No, no. Oh, sure. Oh, well, good. As much fun as this has all been, I'm afraid we're going to have to admit, aren't we, that that infinity is also in the mind? Wow. But what about time, huh? That goes on forever. No. Time doesn't go on forever. Time has an end that and even has a name. The heat death of the universe.
The second law of Thermodynamics states that if the universe lasts for a sufficient time, it will asymptotically approach a state where it has diminished to a position of no free thermodynamic energy and is therefore no longer capable of supporting processes that consume energy, including computation and life. [INAUDIBLE]. Oblivion. That infinity looks a bit bleak, especially towards the end. Oh, the line of rooms, I proved that was infinite for you.
Oh, that truth of yours. You do know that was something not quite right about it, don't you? Well, quite right, but just because I've been through lots of rooms that don't contain out doesn't mean out isn't in the next room. Take this coin. Oh, you've protected the sphere into two dimensions. Well, it has two sides as a head side and a tail side. Now, every time I toss this coin like this. It's equally likely to land tale sight as land head site.
Pets, every time I go into a room, it could contain out just as each time I toss this coin, it could land tail side. It doesn't matter how many times I've tossed it and got heads. Doesn't mean I won't get tails on the next throw. Your proof implies that this coin always lands heads. Even if I tossed 10 heads in a row, there's still a 50 50 chance I'll get tails on the next throw. How many rooms have you been through? 73 million and 12.
And it always lands heads up an unbroken sequence of 73 million and 12 hits, huh? Where do we draw your equation? Has lost its tail? Oh, you bet. It's the same on both sides. Same? The same gets the same. That's it. Your proof assumes all the rooms are the same. Well, yes, you said they're all the same. Just room after room after room, but they're not all the same. Really, the rooms look the same, but what they contain is different.
Why do you think I got all those oranges? Well, I thought you blew up the singularity at zero. No, I found them in some of the rooms I went into. There are other fruits out there, too. There was a pomegranate oh, a come what? Hmm. Yes. A lemon. Oh, it's an exquisite divided by eight squared plus y squared divided by b squared plus squared, divided by sea squared equals all squared on the left side. Oh. Let me add some celluloid. A vuvuzela, a bagel.
Oh, of all, one minus the square root of X squared plus y squared, all squared plus said squared equals are too squared. It's a genius. One surface. Oh oh, always a slinky. Oh, and a folding bicycle. Oh, book o que boyed o a cube light. Aha. Did you see that? Look, look, it's it's decomposing itself into a foundation of parallel some faults with a singularity running right down through the middle. This room wasn't empty, was it? Well, it was before you brought all your things in here.
No, you were in here. This is the first time I've come into a room and found another person in there. Have you ever met another person, a person like me? Oh, another variable. No, I thought I was unique. Fascinating. So if a room can contain you, it can contain out. What's behind that door there? Oh, I don't know, I've never looked, you've never looked. No. Oh, of course you've never looked. Why would you have I thought this was all there was so. Out might be on the other side of that door.
Are you out? Oh, how did he land heads again? What heads again? Oh, Hexagon! I said, heads again. So it is infinite. What's that? It's a ball of string. I found it in the next room. And this ball of string proves that your proof doesn't work because if a room can contain a ball of string, it can contain out. Stop moving about. You can't prove to me that it's infinite, can you? No, exactly. Put those things down and take this. Carefully, this line of rooms is not infinite.
Infinity doesn't exist, this line of rooms has an end. It has an exit. It has out and I am going to find it. And when I do find it, I am going to prove it to you. How with string string stand the hold that carefully in both hands and don't move. I am going to take this end of the string and I'm going to walk into the next room and into the next room and into the room after that, if necessary, and I'm going to keep on walking in a straight line through room after room after room until I find out.
And when I find it, I'm going to pull on the string three times like this. To prove to you that I have found it. How long is your ball of string? It's as long as I need it to be. You know you're going to need an infinite ball of string. We'll see. Yeah. Oh, oh, oh. Who are you? Why? Well, how many are there of you? One. No. Y equals one. No, no. Two ways that's way. Why is that way? Why said she was going to go in a straight line that that's why I did go in a straight line that way?
Well, how did you come from over there then? Oh. It's all joined up. Oh, it's a loop. There is no doubt. Oh, it's not infinite. We were both wrong. We were both. Wrong. Oh. Oh, dear. Oh, dear, dear, dear. Oh, very disappointing. I'm so very tired. You see? I've travelled such a long way. I've collected all this stuff. I've kept everything I've come across. I've carried all this. I'm for what? What's the use of it all?
What is it brought me? What does it all mean? But you've got you've got everything. I've got nothing. Nothing. I'm just stuck here in this line of rooms. You got me. Yes, I'm x squared plus y squared equals one co dependent variables. Yes, yes. When X was one, Y was zero. And when why was one? X was zero, but now, but now X equals y x squared, plus why speed equals one O X and Y are both off the square root of two. That's very nice, dear. Your hands? Your face?
I was away for a very long time, but you only just left. I've been travelling for many, many, many years. OK, now I'm approaching my singularity with a singularity, but the singularity is a point which doesn't isn't defined, it doesn't exist. No. We've only just started. X times y equals one you inverted the circle is not a way out. No. But as Y tends towards zero extends to infinity. So I get my infinity back. Yes, I suppose you do, but I'm afraid you lose me in the process.
I don't want that sort of infinity. I'm afraid that's reality, there's not much we can do about reality. I can resolve your singularity. No, you can't. But you can tell me about your out. My out. My out. A place where numbers go on forever. Parallel lines meet, you can create new geometries, new numbers like the square root of two. Yes, yes, yes. Like the square root of two X and Y are incompatible that the sequence of diminishing squares never terminates. Can you make a new No? A new no.
A new number. Create a new number, you don't mind if I just close my eyes for a moment, did you while you do that? One two three four five six seven. I think knew that minus one minus two, one stream. A half a quarter and a sixteenth, 132. The square root of two. Oh, oh, the circumference of a circle. Oh oh, nothing. What? I got nothing. Why no new numbers? Why? Why? Why? Why aren't you listening to me? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? What's happened to you? Why was one? Why one? Why he calls one.
Y squared equals y. I squared minus one equals y minus one. Minus one times why plus one equals y minus one? Why plus one equals one? For. Hi, Sarah. I think. No, that can't be all there is. There must be something else. The square root of nothing. That's nothing on the square root of one. That's one this one. Well, square root of minus one. There isn't a number which when you square, it equals minus one. Take the square root of minus one.
Imagine it x squared equals minus one one a plus size plus is plus and minus times minus is also plus. So the square root of minus one would be a new number. Well, it's a self-consistent, non contradictory to top the square root of minus one. It's a new number doubles. Oh, new world. A new direction. Oh, I've done it. I found out I did it. I printed it out. Stop it. Oh, you're alive. Oh, it works. No, I'm dead. You're alive. Oh, oh no, I'm dead. You're not dead. I'm dead, I die. He doesn't.
Then I've saved you with you. No, you didn't save me. You can't save someone who's dead. But how come you were alive? I'm not alive, I'm dead. I don't understand. It's very important that the play ends with my death. It symbolises the nothing that awaits us all at the heat death of the universe. So you're dead? Yes, I'm dead, but you're alive. I'm alive. I still don't understand. How can you be dead and alive at the same time?
Because I was saying everyone here was complicit in the act of imagining I was dead. We were telling a story. Have we finished the story? Yes. Oh. Well, no, we're still here, but you're not going to die. No. Oh yes, that's the whole point. But not now, I hope. So that was just a theoretical death. No, it was a theatrical death. Oh. So none of this is real. No. Well, yes, I am real. I hope I am real, aren't I? I don't know what you really are.
Why no, olive? Olive y equals olive olive equals one multiplied by size, by Olowalu squared equality of square olive minus one, in fact, right? I suppose it still does well, look good. We're in a real space, right? All these lovely, real people, people. Yeah, we have an audience. Oh, more variables. Oh, what are they looking at? Well, they're looking at you and me and our imaginary world where nothing is real. Yes. Oh, well, no. I mean, that bag is a real buy.
These trousers are real trousers. Yes, and my room that's real. No, but it hasn't even got real doors. Oh. The cube is real, but it only exists because it's part of a theatre set that we had specially built. Yes, yes. But if you go through the imaginary doors and then there are more cubes that way and more cubes that way. Oh no, there's nothing else. This is it. This is this is all right.
This is our entire set. Is this one? Q Oh, actually, that's not quite true because somewhere we've got a model that's all designer made us have specially built so that we could see what the cube was going to look like when we built it for real. Oh. Oh, so that's my cue. Yes. No. Yes, it's a model of your cube. Right? Actually, and here they are also some other models, I think, Oh yes, look, here's you. Bobblehead, huh? And here's me his you in your cube.
And here's me coming into the cube ooh y equals one multiplied by y y squared equals y take one y squared minus one equals y minus one. [INAUDIBLE], I don't sound like that. You do sometimes dance that actually. Sometimes yeah, you do. You do a bit sometimes. So this model helps us to tell the story. And the story is real. No. Well, yes. Yes, it's a real story, but the story is not real. We made it up when I made myself up. Yes, you're in the script.
We're both in the script script, which ends with my death. Oh. So am I in the script? No, no. We finished the script. We're off script. So what are we doing now? I don't know. Oh. In fact, I'm not entirely sure if any idea what's real and what's not real anymore at all. A script was real. Well, yes. The script was real, but. I think the ideas in the script were all too real, and maybe I'm starting to think that the mathematics in the story was the most real thing of all.
So Infinity Israel, yeah, I knew it. Well, no, no, it's a real idea, but it's not real. You can't show it to me. So what is real? What is real? OK? The quest for meaning that is real. That's real. The the desire to subvert the finite. The the need for happy ever after. You mean the search for out? Yes, I suppose so. Yes, because you know, when you are dying and you were going to leave me on my own in here with my infinity and I thought I was going to miss you rather a lot.
I had just found you and out. Really? Yes. I created a new number. Well, you encouraged me and then I imagined it. And then there was a new direction. But how is that out? Well, I thought you could climb up and out. Well, how could I climb out there? Well, I thought. Oh, I hadn't got that yet. Well, maybe maybe the model will help me find a solution. Yes, maybe the model will help me find a solution. Well, this why it was excellent. Six. Yes. Yes. Here I am.
Yeah. So how could I get up there? Well, I don't know. I just got as far as imagining a new number. I hadn't really worked out a way for you to get out. I mean, well, maybe there be something or maybe something more in the box. Yes, in the in the box, maybe something in the box and a script. Oh, look, look what I found. Oh, you could climb out of these? Oh, you are so very clever x. Oh, you are. Yes. Thank you very much, X. I don't sound anything like that at all.
You do sound like that a bit. Yes. So I thought that you could climb up now. I created a new direction with my new number. And now you could climb up and out. Oh, thank you very much. Yes, you're right. I can climb up to the new direction and then your new number has found me out. Oh oh, oh oh oh. Well, I think maybe this time I would come with you. Oh, well, maybe it would be it, but it's in that direction. Oh, and then we would both be out. Yes. Come on. Okay.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, it's real, oh, it's real, I'm coming, why? Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm alternating, oscillating. It's very hard. Oh, that's fair. Entirely natural, given the potential risk risk. Well, what you're attempting to do is incredibly dangerous. Oh oh oh, I'm stuck. I can't move. That's paralysis, fear, and it's most acute state. What you need is a good dose of induction. Induction induction let p m b the statement you can climb any rungs of the ladder.
Oh, now you've already got onto the first rung, so that's the base step proved right. Oh, and then from the end rung, it's a simple step up to the M class one from Oh, support for you may be Oh. Oh, well, it's quite simple. Good. That's the inductive step right now, apply the second old axiom for inductive logic, and you'll find you can climb as high as you like, really? Oh, induction, high induction, induction or not. Oh, it's working, it's working well, it duction, oh, I'm coming, right?
Oh, to infinity. Oh, why? Why inductions to yes. Yes, I know that. Oh, one more time. What the factorial how the factorial did you what the factorial is that it's a trick, a trick. Yeah, it's a trick. It's a trap door. A trap door. Yes, a trap door. It's a trick trap door trick trap door. It's a trick trap door. No, I don't understand. How did you go up there? Now you're coming from down there theatrically. You want to step inside. Well, is it safe? Is it safe?
Well, yes, it's safe. Whoa, oh, oh, oh, eight, oh oh, that's Beirut. Oh, and there's a skull. Is this a dagger I see before me? Oh good, I come out. No job. It's Oh oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, so you see, it's a theatrical trick now. I still don't understand you. There you go. Well, I I didn't really climb through a hole in the ceiling. Really? No. Now what I did was I climbed up this ladder here, and then I climbed down the back of the ladder behind the black cloth.
See? Oh, really? And then I just walked off the stage. Oh, really? Oh. No, no. I just walked off into the wings. Wings. Oh, space can fly. Oh, it's a theatrical term. Oh, I just walked off stage into the wings and I squirrelled round the back. Round the back. Yeah, round the back. There's a way around the back. Go and have a look. It's quite safe and quite safe. I'll talk you through it and round the back, so we'll just step off off the set.
I'll you go and walk across the stage right behind the wings. Oh, there we go. Be fine. Oh, but up you'll be OK. We'll fight. If you if you turn left, you can just squirrel right round the back. Well, there's another variable. Well, that's the stage manager. So, oh well, I can't see anything. It's just blackness. And oh. There's a way around. Yep. Do I do the squirrel? Yeah, you do squirrel all the way around the back.
Oh, I can see a blue light on the other side. Yeah, there's a light at the end of the tunnel. That's the backstage like, Oh, it's all symmetrical. Yep. Oh, it's a loop. Yeah. Oh, so now you should find Joe waiting in the wings stage, right? Oh, and if you keep walking. Come onto the set, you'll find you've made an entrance. Oh, look. So you didn't go all the way around the universe. You just hit the squirrel run. Is it convertible? The function? Yes. Yes. You can go the other way.
Can I go all the way around the back again? When he comes back in, he's going to make another entrance. Shall we give him a little round of applause when he comes in just so he knows? Oh, it's take it back to the. Again, I think he really enjoyed that. Shall we indulge him just once more? Again, no milk it, milk it. Never mind. So that's how we suggested that our space was looped in two directions, you see, Oh, so I knew, no, it didn't find you out.
No, no. We just be on another surface that was looped in two directions. So for instance, we could be on the surface of a gigantic orange, so it would be looped in that direction. And in that direction as well? Right? Yes. Yeah. Or you could be on the the genius one surface you brought in, you know, the oh one minus the square root of X squared plus y spread all squared plus square equals R2 square.
The bagel had a name for that. What did you call it? Yeah, the bagel. Yeah, it's a bagel. Where's the bagel? I ate it. You ate it. I was hungry. You ate the universe was just a prop. Well, quite an important prop. What's a prop? What's a prop? Well, a prop is something that we use in theatre either as itself or pretending to be something else. We use it to help us tell a story. It's part of the power of theatre. The theatre is the set of all possible self-consistent structures seen in theatre.
We can suggest. And by suggesting we can make something seem real. Oh. You see. Listen. Can this cockpit hold the boss the fields of France, or may we cram within this wooden cube? The very casks that did a flight to the air at Agincourt? Oh, pardon! Since a crooked figure may attest in little place a million and let us. Ciphers to this greater comfort on your imaginary forces work. See, you read some of what? Yeah. Hmm. Let us. Mine is all squared y plus x squared y plus y cubed.
That's good. Yeah, well, minus two all except minus two x squared z minus two y squared plus y z squared equals zero. Great. It's a it's a finite closed. No, an oriental manifold. Keep going. OK. What are you doing? I'm physicalize in space. You can't do that. That's my Shakespeare. It's it's a wasted space. Rubbish. That's pathetic. That's not beautiful data to prop. It's a Mobius strip that helps us how I wanted to make theatre.
I thought it might help you to point it out. So instead, you've just destroyed my most precious book. De facto, you can't put it back. Oh, oh, oh. Give that to me. Stop that. Well, I didn't realise it was a non inverted function. Well, it is. It's all right. It is just a book. And I appreciate the effort. That's all right. I'm not really sure I. And we don't know what. Y equals Olive. Yeah. Can I ask you a question? Yes. What is your out? I don't know. Something.
Not nothing. That's what this story is about. I keep looking for something, and it always ends in nothing. Nothing doesn't exist. It's just an idea. Oh, it does. No, it doesn't. It does. It doesn't. It does, doesn't. It does, doesn't. It does. Doesn't. It does. It does. The heat death of the universe, the end of time. Oh, Bolivian, that is nothing. That is nothing. That is the ending that's waiting for all of us at the end of all our scripts.
Even the burial. Every single one of us. What you mean? You mean they're not out, either? Oh, they're not out. They might have come out on a night out to come in here to try and find out they're out, but they're not out there. Just did another in what? Looking in looking in. Looking in. Out out, brief candle. Life is but a walking shadow. A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
No, no, no, no, no, signifying something. No, I think you'll find it's nothing. No, no, no. It signifies something else acute inside a cube. Oh, it's a shudder, it's a shudder. It's a shadow, a shadow, it's a shadow of a four dimensional shape, a shadow. Yes. If I could take a torch and shine it on a cube in four dimensions, then the shadow it would cost is a cube inside a larger cube.
The shadow? Yes, a shadow or shadow proves the existence of a thing which is costing it, even though the thing which is costing it is unseeable. It proves there must be something more. When you say it's unseeable, you mean you can't show it to me, so then I can't believe it exists then. But just because you can't see it, that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. So you? Take that what that that noise.
That was we're never going to know what that is, but it's like the shadow, it proves the existence of something else, even though we'll never know what that is. But I do know what that is, really. That was a siren. A siren? Yeah, siren. Well, what's a siren? Siren is a noise that ambulances or police cars make to show other people that they're there so they ambulances or police cars. Yeah, that functions that translate sick or naughty variables.
Oh, well, it's a lovely idea, but you'll never be able to show it to me, but I could show that to you. Really? Yeah. If you went through one of those doors at the back, doors at the back. Yeah, you see behind the audience there, there are two doors. They got little men running little green rectangles. That's just imaginary doors. No, those are real doors. Well, what's behind those doors? Behind those doors is the foyer of the Oxford Playhouse and there's a bar.
And then beyond that there, then there's some glass doors. And on the other side of those, there's the street, which is where the sirens and the police cars and the ambulances are streets. Yeah. Well, it sounds that's not out. That's just in the city, that's just in Oxford, where there's spires and sirens and cash points and and sick and peeling bells hitting bells. Well, that's oh no, that's not out. That's just in another inn that's in the city. Can you get out of the city? Yeah.
But then you'd be in the country with with fields of wheat and and wind farms and inbreeding and and town cows pull that out. No, that's not out. That's just in another and not in the Cotswolds that's in the country. Well, what can you get out of the country? Well, yes. But then you'd be in outer space where there's space and and planets and space and galaxies. And space and universes and dark matter and wormholes, worms and holes. Oh, that's out. No, that's not out. That's in another end.
That's in outer space. It doesn't matter how far you go, you'll never get out. You'll just be in another in. But I want to be out there. You can't. Why? Because your ex. Because we made you up. You're in the script. But I would be out there. I'm afraid the script says that you stay in here. A manifold needs no ambient space in which to exist. And you what happens to you? I love to stay in here. I'd love to be in your out.
I love to lie here in the shadow of your four dimensional cube, knowing it exists without needing to see it to be still. But the script says that I keep going through room after room, after room tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time. Oh, and what is the last syllable of recorded time? Well, what does the script say? It says nothing. Well, it must say something, it can't just say nothing.
It says nothing. We're going to rewrite this script. What I'm going to give you out so you can't. I'm going to give you my out a place where there's something, not nothing. A place where when numbers go on forever, where parallel lines meet. Yes, where things can exist without being. See where there are ideas that don't die, signifying something you can't do that you can't just rewrite a script in the middle of a show like this. You can't. You can't. I'm completely losing track.
This is really a toss. This is that you said that anything was possible. Yeah, but look, stand there. Don't move. Hold this. I'm going to take the end of this script. Oh, you're putting a twist in the script. It's a Mirpur script. I made a joke. Yes, you did. Oh, OK. Theoretically, if something goes around this universe, then it gets flipped over. So theatrically, a change of variable. So X becomes Y. Yes. Look. Are you sure you want to do this? As I tend towards infinity, you tends to zero.
No more +1. The streets. And peeling belts. And Carlos. Out. Oh. Well, I was holes. Out. Why? Wait. Look after it. Out. So that's just I love and. Strange loop, I love this piece, and I wanted to. It's really from the very first time I saw it and then its subsequent iterations. It really, I suppose one of the first things that it made me do at the beginning was that it made me laugh so much a little bit. And it's it's quite the cat in bed with the questions that it asks.
And of course, there is this fantastic relationship between the subject matter and the and the theatricality. But maybe I should start by asking Marcus in Victoria, why did you at title date? Where did that? How did the title begin? Well, actually, the title began at the end because the title emerged very late in this whole piece and as you say, it's been through many iterations.
We've gone round this loop and very many times and each time we find kind of something new in it and that's what's so exciting. I think about the process that I think many people probably feel that, oh, isn't a play written by a playwright and then handed to the company to perform. And I mean, this in some sense, is something I very much learnt from you, Simon.
You know, I did a lot of theatre as a student came along to see complicity in its very early days at the Percocets Theatre in Oxford when I was a Ph.D. student and and somehow I learnt that no, a piece really is written as it's performed, and those early performances with an audience are somehow part of the writing process. So actually, the title is a strangely really came to us very late on when we staged it at the Barbican as part of a a triptych idea.
It's about Douglas Hofstadter, his book Girdle Schubach, and we had a concert performance with some Bach written by some Aiye and Bach himself.
We did a sort of installation piece in the Barbican, but then we did also the performance of this play, and it was at that point we suddenly realised, Gosh, this is a play actually not just about mathematics and theatre, but also about kind of consciousness and artificial intelligence, because X's character is somehow artificially created and then thrown into this kind of embodied world.
And and the whole structure of the play is the structure of a strangely because things, the hierarchies of maths, then theatre and then the theatre you realise isn't that part of the real world, which isn't that just actually part of mathematics itself and the mathematics is actually at the top of this hierarchy?
So this idea that Douglas Hofstadter came up with of a strange loop is something which sort of goes up in hierarchies, but then seems to return to the the hierarchy had right at the beginning. So the best image is that one Escher did of a hand drawing a hand in. You're not quite sure which is the real hands. And that seemed to be sort of what came out of this, this playing we did that. We created a structure where you're not actually sure which which one is embedded in the other.
And so it was only at the end we sort of realised, Oh my gosh, this is a play as much about the creation of an artificial life within the context of something that may be realised and the real life that seems to have created it. And so, so that's its name was very late on in the kind of whole process also. So I was going to say we've had a lot of discussions, both of us with you, Simon, about what consciousness is and whether it's possible to define it.
And I think more and more as I get older that I don't know what I am and I and that I believe it's impossible to define consciousness within the being that's already. But is it self? And so, you know, there's a kind of there is a there's an unknowability about what's the self actually is. And Douglas Hofstadter wrote a book called I Am a Stranger and we at the Smoker says towards the end of the process, I realised that I is a strange loop was was what the play was about.
And it's very interesting. You mentioned Beckett, because a few people sort of suggested a title for the play should be waiting for girdle. It'll being this mathematician that considered strange links in logic. So that was never going to let that happen. So that's that. Forgive me for saying, but that is like a mathematicians joke. So the other person who described it as Piketty and was Ali Carseldine was the first thing.
She said when she read it was that it was very Piketty, and so we were terribly well flattered. Well, perhaps we could just dig in to that for a moment because, you know, why might it be the Kachin and what do we mean by that? That's an interesting thought. But also the whole function of theatre is also a curious loop. And in terms of interesting in its relationship with consciousness, because it's, you know, John, you described theatre as an act of ritual return.
So a sense of the ritual repeating and repeating and sort of defining who we are in such an odd thing that we all get up each evening when we work in theatre and we do the same thing over and over and then the audience come in and they know that it's real, but it's not real life. And then they all pretend that it.
Really is real life, and it is real life because we are really there in front of people, but we are pretending to be other people and so on and these leaks of of fiction and meta fiction that exist within it. It is why at a certain point, of course, I was interested in how might theatre be able to talk about consciousness? And of course, before I got interested in consciousness, I was completely obsessed with questions of memory.
And I think out of these questions, and I think that was perhaps one of the early connexions we had between us, but I was found that the process of theatre useful for trying to work out problems that I found difficult to understand. So when I made mnemonic, which is about memory, I thought, Oh, I'm going to try and understand something about memory and identity, which is an early search into consciousness.
But also, when Michael and Dutchy gave me the book, The Mathematicians Apology, I realised, Oh my god, I've never really understood mathematics, not understood it, but I've had a very difficult relationship with it. And yet when I read the mathematicians apology, I say, Look, you know, mathematics is there's something unbelievable about mathematics, as well as something deeply logical. And this phrase of Charles is that a mathematician like a painter, a poet is a maker of patterns.
The idea that mathematics is an art was incredibly exciting and revealing to me. And so when I decided to try and make something of this relationship between Hardy and Ramanujan and try and make a show about mathematics, that was when our long way of saying our collaboration started. And was that the first time I met you, Victoria? I can't remember. I must know. And when did we?
We first started working together on the elephant vanishes unless you knew you wanted there to be something in it to the second law of thermodynamics and the fact that entropy is increasing all the time. So we helped put some things into that show. What about that? And then we what function can afterwards? Yeah, of course. And and and that's how we we started. But I think maybe when did we start working together, Marcus?
Obviously, we started working together in the Pegasus. Well, yes, but then I was just some spotty PhD student. So it was, yes, sort of part of the crowd. But I remember getting this email from one of your production team saying, Oh, you probably don't know who we are. We're a theatre company called Complexité, and we're doing a play about maths and we'd love you to come in.
And of course, I'd actually been fantasising about running away with a theatre company like Publicité for years after spending time in the Pegasus. Whatever my maths is going badly, that's kind of my fantasy. I don't know how many times I downloaded the application form to OK. It's a kind of escape. So I wrote back this incredible fanboy email saying, Oh, I know exactly who complicit they are, and I'd love to come in and spend some time talking about maths with you.
So I think your your team have kept that email because it was so hilarious. But so yeah, they you know, I came in, I suppose, because I mean, my feeling about theatre and mathematics is this for me, there was always a similarity because there's the kind of fun of setting up some rules and just seeing what the consequences of those rules are. And I suppose theatre was always a space where you could try out some things which weren't about real life necessarily.
I mean, you could create a space with strange rules like like we do in the play where you know, you go off one side of the theatre and you come in in the other and you can construct a kind of weird space with that stage. And for me, that was always the exciting thing. What what rule is actually a powerful and evolve something hugely complex and interesting, even though there are some simple beginnings? And and what rules sometimes just crash and it doesn't work.
And the exploration of that kind of abstract world that you can create, I think, was always a kind of resonance for me. So, so is fun coming in? You know, you were interested in finding out what Ramanujan and Hardy had done together, you know, to really embed the mathematics as part of the play. And I mean, it was just so funny because I mean, I loved it when we got so immersed in the maths that I remember Simon, you asking me something so.
A mock theatre function. What is a mock theatre function? And I realised we sort of delved so deep, but I think your production team said, can you not come back tomorrow? Because Simon's got totally obsessed with the mathematics and we need to make a play? Well, I mean, the what is marvellous about your piece is a strange loop is that you have found a way of embedding ideas.
And that was what was exciting about collaboration. And now I remember it, of course, about you, Victoria being the elephant vanishes and my asking you about the second both thermodynamics because I wanted some philosophical ideas too. And even if they were not on the surface, they were that deeply as what I would call the reservoir underneath the the piece so that, you know, embodying ideas about light or about entropy.
They then produced other physical responses in us, which we knew we knew where they came from, even if the audience didn't necessarily know. And it was tremendously exciting when both of you, Victoria Marcus, were there in a disappearing number and we had with the actors, they had to find a way of showing of of embodying, for example, the Series one plus a five plus in a quarter plus an eighth plus a sixteenth plus one of the thirty two plus one ever sixty four.
And the fact that it makes two in infinity, but of course, it never reaches two. And this idea of two things never quite reaching each other. We found extremely beautiful and very, very stimulating and in fact gave rise to all sorts of improvisations. So when you both of you were making your piece, did you did you use some of those things too? Did you improvise like that? How how how was it? I mean, and you were just too? Absolutely.
Although I think there was a very strong sense that we wanted the play to have a mathematical shape overall. I mean that locally, of course, we're talking about mathematics and there their explorations of things like whether infinity exists. But I think one of the challenges for us was, you know, can we make the play, have a shape? I mean, in some sense, there's an exploration of the different dimensions that are possible. There's a line of rooms, so you've got one dimension.
And then we we burst through the ceiling and come through it, a trapdoor in the floor, so we got another dimension. And the idea then that X could leave through the audience produces a third dimension. But could that be looped? And in which case have we sort of created a four dimensional shape because we've looped this thing in three dimensions and created a sort of four dimensional tourists?
So actually a four dimensional shape was was a shape we had in our minds, and that's why we create this Tesseract at the end, which is a cube inside a cube, which kind of tells you there's something else, which is one of the big questions in the play. Is there anything other than what we're sort of sitting inside?
But I think ultimately we found this this shape of the Mobius Strip, which is a strange loop which sort of folds back on itself a very powerful image for the idea of two characters sort of needing each other and swapping over by the end. And as my fantasy with this piece has always been that we should do a sort of 24 hour run where actually at the end of the piece, of course, X comes back on stage three of those rooms and corridors and burst in on why.
And we just run the play completely again with X and Y swapped over and just see what the dynamics of that changing with. I wish we'd done that for John Birger. That would have been good. I know would have been amazing. And just to keep running it and people come in at any point during the 24 hours. So I think that's my fantasy with this. But but I think the know embedding mathematics actually is as the shape of the play was, I think one of our dreams, wasn't it, Victoria?
I think. Yeah, we yes. And we wanted it. We originally wanted it to be an almost entirely in mathematical language as well. But I was like to pick up on something that Simon asked us, which was how did you make it when they were just two of us? And that resonated very much because they were never just two of us. And if that had it been just two of us, we would never have made the play because we would have been eating all the time.
It spent our entire very important eating delicious things, going out to restaurants. So there was always somebody else and it was different people. And sometimes it was you, Simon, and some a lot of the time it was Dermot. And but I think I think you can make it without somebody observing and us sort of asking about to.
Would never would never have made it clear to so there was always had to be at least a third eye, if not more, and we've had some incredible collaborators on this piece to whom we are grateful and without which it would not have been made.
Undoubtedly. And Marcus said, you arrived at a point where in where you were examining a mathematical shape, which demanded the question as to whether there was something more to what do you think Victoria is that has this has making this piece of theatre as well as just cogitating it's do you feel that there is something more? Oh, absolutely. And I didn't think that before I made the piece, I made the piece. I was constantly kind of crying. There must be something more.
I don't mean physically crying. I mean, just because it's something that y says towards the very beginning of the play, which is looking at looking for out. And she says there must be something else. This can't be all there is. I am now fairly sure that that's the case. What that is, I don't know, and I don't think I ever will, but I'm certainly coming to feel that I we live with the unknowable and it is, but it's not unknowable because we haven't discovered it yet.
It's unknowable because it is by definition memorable because of our biology, because we are beings that cannot know everything. And I just wanted to pick up on something you said, Simon, about making a play because you want to understand something or you want to investigate your relationship with with an idea. And I think I've always found great difficulty with the fact that I'm a I'm alive now, and at some point I will be dead.
And as Woody Allen said, it's it's infinite is a very long time, especially towards the end. And that kind of has always troubled me very much. And so I suppose personally coming into this play was very much about my wanting to explore my obsession with with awe and fear of death and time being eternal.
And I think now I'm much more comfortable with it because. Because I know that I will never know that there is that what else that there is, but that there is definitely other stuff that we will we just don't know about. And that feels that now feels comforting, whereas I think I started thinking about these ideas from a plate, from a place of fear.
I think that's a very close connexion with Beckett. Because the question of what is impossible to know and the idea constantly playing with the idea that there is of of nothing and nothingness and something and something, this is right at the heart of Beckett's work, where he of course goes on and he starts taking more and more things away until there isn't anything. But of course, there is always something.
So and and I suppose one of the images I wanted to ask you, perhaps I could ask you both to answer the image. Would Mobius strip? Is that you can when you take the piece of paper and you turn it and you join it up and you have make a line and it can be continuous. One of the beautiful aspects of it is this idea of continuity that something is there continuously. And yet, of course, we know that the quality of X and Y are what we would call. You would call it mathematics, discrete or separate.
And yet something about a subject which interests me very, very much is this question of continuity because we are brought up to believe the narrative that we're brought up to believe is that we are all completely separate. But I'm not convinced that that is true, partly because of different cultures and people that I have.
And a time in Japan, indeed, that we have encountered, whereby there is a very strong sense of being continuous and contiguous with the outside world in continuous exchange with it. And I wondered whether Marcus, you what do you feel about this relationship between what you might call separation and the, you know, and continuity?
Because then I suppose. Although numbers are discreet and there's an infinity of numbers joining every number in between each of those numbers is another infinity and so on so that a g. Do you think things are discrete or do you think they are continuous? And I think this absolutely is is one of the real tensions in the play, which is explored because as you've just expressed, we can we can imagine the idea of infinity numbers going off to infinity dividing numbers.
But the challenge of whether this is physically possible and that's in a sense, is one of those things we don't know. I mean, whether whether our universe actually contains any instance of the idea of infinity, I mean is, is the universe infinite? Just it just go on forever. That seems a very strange thing.
And I suppose, you know, that was one of my inspirations for this whole piece was reading Borchers and the Library of Babel, which is the idea of a space, a library and the librarian in that library, never being sure whether his library is an infinite load of hexagon hexagonal rooms put together, or whether there's a wall that you hit and ultimately comes to the idea.
No, the thing is finite, but loops. So this is very interesting that you can create sort of the the possibility of infinity within the finite. With this idea of something being looped and the possibility of going around it infinitely often. But I think, you know, quantum physics kind of says that things are not infinitely divisible. There is a kind of discrete bits that builds everything. It's quite possible that time itself might. It might be discrete pieces.
So, so quite possible that the universe itself is is finite. And therefore, that raises the question So what is mathematics? Then it's something it's always been something sort of separate from from the physical and scientific world because you can always create things which don't have a physical reality. We have many different sorts of geometry, and we don't. One of them applies to our universe, but the others are equally possible, but are just models.
That's for a perhaps another sort of universe. But I think one of the things as well that you mentioned, which is this idea of sort of connexion between things, you know, this is discrete, but that, you know, each discrete thing only sort of has sort of grows when it's in connexion with something else and that communication between them.
So I think one of the important things is in this play, each of the individuals on their own X and Y is missing something, and it's only with the communication and collaboration between these two that they realise what the other has that will help them to to navigate their their world and their challenges. And it's really is a love affair. I mean, this play really has everything. It's called depth, it's got love, it's got mathematics.
But I think it is a love affair in some sense between the two where they realise what's missing in them is present. In the other, the way X experiences taste for the first time, embodiment, physicality. I think that's one of the journeys of the play. We're back in Victoria. Well, I was thinking and Marcus was saying that how impossible it was to make a play that wasn't about the relationship between two people.
And I think that wasn't what we wanted to do, but we couldn't help it, which was interesting, even though for a lot of the play, we're only speaking in sort of algebra that when when two people meet there. Yeah, with a house, there is a relationship. I was also thinking about your question, Simon, about whether we are separate or together or continuous, whether things are discrete or continuous. And I think that's runs through the whole that idea and that idea of an asset toxic relationship.
You were talking about that two lines that can't get closer and closer and closer together, but never, ever meet. I do a lot of workshops in schools and whenever I ask children or young adults to respond to that idea, they always do something about two people trying to get closer and closer to each other, but not able to touch. And I always they always talk about the idea of of of perfect love between two people.
Being this idea of that, you can get closer and closer, but you can never actually be the other person. You can never merge into the other person. And I had a terrible diagnosis last year. Some bad news and all I wanted to do was climb inside the body of my husband. I wanted to enter his body and that that's just something in that's about about these mathematical ideas, about two things that are so close, but actually ultimately discreet. It's very much about the tension of love, I think.
And that's exactly I mean, Douglas Hofstadter, his book I Am a Strange Loop, is him dealing with the death, sudden death of his partner and his realisation that actually the partner because of all of those connexions that we do sort of a kind of enmeshed ourselves with our memories, with our just somehow we create a common consciousness between two people spending time together and.
And his idea of, well, what is that and whose idea is this kind of strange loop where things connect and reconnect is the creation of trying to fight that idea that our consciousness is discrete and only in us?
And it's not true. It's sort of is. And I think that's isn't that, after all, what we do in theatre is creating a sort of wonderful collective consciousness for a few short hours together where we sort of are all imagining the same thing, that wonderful thing you did in a disappearing number, Simon, where you trick us all into imagining the number seven because of a little bit of algebra and just that magic of us all sorts of having a a sort of a connexion suddenly.
Remember you talking about this a long time ago, your sense in the theatre that because we're all breathing the same air and we're saying the same thing on stage, there's a kind of cloud of our collective consciousness is there, which kind of floats above the audience. And I think that's true. I think as it's sort of the opposite opposite of separateness being being in the theatre.
I think so. And so this brings me on to the question of again, what what, what is mathematics doing in the theatre or theatre doing with mathematics? And there have been you can think of the plays of Michael Frayn and all sorts of other people, a play called Proof. But I think Michael David open, there's been many plays written about mathematics, but they've tended to be biographical accounts of the three people.
And I think what is really interesting and what you're doing is, of course, the embodiment of maths. And of course, that was something that we tried to do a lot in a disappearing number to make it to actually sometimes do real mathematics on stage, but also make the structure of the play mathematical and make connexions in time between the time of hardship Ramanujan and time of the present day couple and the structure of the whole piece itself.
And again, the piece, which dealt with both love and death, which seemed intimately connected. And I suppose one of the things that interests me is the fact that we regard we talk about mathematics as something very much separate. Although I was bad at maths, this thing of something being separate in our lives to who we actually are and what is marvellous about your piece is you feel all.
These different elements come together and that this is at the heart of our lives, and I suppose I just wanted I'm sort of grasping towards a question, but it's that. And. Is there not a problem somewhere with us in our society in the way that and it comes back to separation again, the way that we think of all of these areas is being, yeah, separate discrete things.
And in fact, it's a very present problem right now because all the funding to the arts is universities is being cut as if it's somehow separate to everything else or a kind of thing on top. And I suppose your experience, I was wanting to ask yourself about the experience of making it and what people's reactions were while you were making it,
and perhaps talk about some of the reactions to the play itself. But just I'm rooting it in this sense in what I think is a completely arbitrary and false separation of all the different ways in which human beings enquire in the world. Yeah, totally. I think that's, you know, most people's perception of mathematics. You know, what do I do in my office here as a professor of mathematics? I think they think I'm doing long division to a lot of decimal places.
And, you know, surely I've been put out of a job by now, but actually, it's something very creative about being a mathematician. And that's of course, what Hardy and mathematicians apology is trying to communicate to people that, you know, you're playing around with ideas, and I'm actually like, sort of. It's an art. It is an art. And it's I would say it's but it's, you know, you mentioned that word pattern. He says there's no such thing as there's no place in the world for ugly mathematics.
Beauty is the first test, is what he said. Exactly. I mean, I think that was probably quite extreme, and there is unfortunately place for messy mathematics. But but I think it's, you know, actually, I think mathematics, it's a study of structure and the relationships between things. And that's why I think you see mathematics coming out all over the place. So. So that's what's happening in theatre.
The connexions between mathematics and music, you know, music is the art of patterns and and I think there was there was an extraordinary moment, a disappearing number which felt so mathematical to me because again, it's disappearing. No grew in the same way as our play. Did you? You did it many times. It wasn't working at some points. And I remember coming and seeing it in Amsterdam. And Simon, you going, Look what I've done. You'll see, I've solved it.
I've solved it, you said. And I was just like, Oh, and what had happened was where there were two characters independent characters, one played by yourself and another an Indian businessman. You'd suddenly realise these were the two same characters and you merged. These two took yourself out of the play as a character and made these two characters the same. And that, for me, was totally mathematical. So many times in the maths that I, I scribble on my yellow notepad.
You know that moment of Sony saying, Oh my gosh, that's the same as that, and a whole equation collapses, then the thing just blows outwards. I mean, that's structural understanding of of all of this piece, I think, you know, it was an extraordinary moment of revelation, and the piece suddenly worked in a different way after that sort of mathematical revelation. Interesting. Well, what Hardy said is it may be very hard to define mathematical beauty, but that is just as true a beauty of any kind.
We may not know quite what we mean by a beautiful poem, but that doesn't prevent us from recognising one when we read it. And I think if we are thinking of theatre and mathematics as separate subjects, which is, I suppose, at the root of your question, why? Why make a play about maths when they're so different is that I don't believe they are different because I think they're both utterly rooted in the imagination, all of Max's imaginary concepts.
There's no such thing as to. I mean, it doesn't exist. It's not a real thing. It's an idea. There isn't an end. When we were making this play, it seemed at the beginning, quite crudely, but it's extremely easy to see what's real and what's not real. And actually, of course, it isn't. That reality is incredibly elusive, as is the idea of Tunis.
And and and this ties and I think with what you were asking Typekit about, but subjects being compartmentalised to those different things when of course, all they are is different narrative structures, they're just different ways of both of making worlds. The things that we recognise that we can, we can we can communicate with each other about the divides between the subjects I think are incredibly artificial.
Certainly in school, they are just that just different, different ways of talking about things, different ways of talking about the same things, which is us trying to communicate with each other and to make life easier for ourselves and be less frightened of things. So whether that's whether you're going to do that by studying geography or mathematics or looking at plays, I think they're all the same thing.
I think they're all trying to make sense of what it is to be alive using different kinds of language. And we we wind up going back to your asking about how to make a mathematical play. We were always a Marcus, and I very we have very few rules. But the one was that we wanted it to be an inherently mathematical piece so that there was it was made up of mathematics and there was mathematics unfolding in front of the audience. And that you were you were feeling and living in a mathematical way.
We wanted to use a lot of mathematical language. We toyed with using idea entirely mathematical language. And partly that was because we think I think mathematical language can be useful. I mean, it's it's there are many beautiful words, robotics and in itself, it's a kind of poetry. So we thought it might be interesting to make a piece that was not. It was used nothing but mathematical language just because it's very useful and you
can let it kind of wash over you in a way you can the language you don't understand. It was kind of curious that sort of humour emerged out of that. I mean, I think you know what is humour is kind of the surprise at things, and I think that's often what I enjoy about mathematics is is where the equations take me and I get an emotional response and that's what I want to share with an audience. It isn't. You know, that's the choices. I make a boring piece, but that's what Heidi was on about.
It's about story. We aren't storytellers. And, you know, a story is about X's and whys. And but what was very curious, you mentioned something about the reception of the play because I was very curious because we did this kind of many different venues, many different places as it evolved and finally arrived at the Barbican. But the reaction of like eight year old kids on the front row at a festival just laughing their heads off.
But the kind of clowning nature of it and the, you know, the whole eight year olds, of course, are contemplating whether the universe just goes on forever. And then somehow we stop asking that question so, so is wonderful. It was really working for young people, sort of. It works on a philosophical level. The one place which was so exciting, we took it to India and the audience reaction there was phenomenal.
I think partly because I mean, you mentioned this kind of badge of honour that we seem to wear in the West about being, you know, not good at maths. And that's somehow something people is proud, somebody proud to say. But in India, then you know, they have a real respect for mathematics.
And I think what they found surprising, though, was it being taken out of the classroom, which is where they study it, feel it's very, you know, they are very good at it and seeing it in a theatrical context totally shocked them. And we had the audiences on their feet sort of cheering in the middle of the play. It was the most extraordinary experience. So, you know, it was very strange that an Indian audience was always the perfect audience for this.
The one people who actually found it very difficult were maths teachers because they they all people. The question that sort of comes up a lot, which we now find very funny, is who is it? Oh, who is this playful and particularly maths teacher say that in fact, one must teach, reading said to me, I mean, is this the end at GCSE maths students or A-level students? And of course, the answer to that is that it's for is it's for everybody who's alive and knows that they're going to die.
And it's for every child that's laying on their bed and looked at the night sky and wondered how far it goes and what's what's behind it. If I flew out that window, would I keep flying forever? So it's very much for everybody. But I it's interesting that suddenly and journalists as well as a sometimes find it very difficult. What we won't tell them who it's for. Yes, it's very, extremely revealing. And what, Marcus, you were saying about the reception in India.
I wish I'd seen it that it must have been amazing. But the children slapping their thighs, literally, it was extraordinary. Tony, you worked with us on the disappearing. No educated, just so memorable, memorably showing us how mathematics underpins music so clearly in India that they literally count as part of the music. And the complexity of that counting and the complexity of the beats is absolutely part of everyday life and the complexity of the patterns of.
That people make on their on their doorsteps are also mathematical, and in a sense, it's right at the heart of everyday life in a way that it's not necessarily, although it is, it's not necessarily acknowledged as so in, you know, in what you might call Western or European culture. But of course, we know, as you rightly point out at the beginning, that, no, you can't have part without mathematics.
But I wanted to ask you one question about the one of the things I think is in the at the heart of it, which I love is the sense of the unknowability of things. Because people think about mathematics as nothing, there is a risk. What I find so beautiful and what you educated me on in this number was how much is unknowable?
And mathematics constantly reveals things, but it also constantly reveals about we can't know like, you know, we can't possibly know the square root of minus one, but imagining it to be there, to be something, even though we don't know what it is, allows us to unravel the next thing in the sense that in King Lear, you can't possibly really know.
What it's about, and yet it puts us in front of the unknowability of things, of course, it's about acting is about everything in the structure of King Lear. So fascinating because it's a little bit we say, Well, what is this? You know, it's again the GCSE thing that we told at school. We have to write something about the structure of King Lear. What is the structure? And of course, it's a little bit like trying to write about the structure of a tree. Because it's always going to be different.
You can't tell why that branch has come off, and while it seems really extraordinary, but it works, it forms the whole tree. I mean, you can't tell why King Lear disappears for 20 minutes, but it works. You know it is. It is organic. And I suppose that is one of the things that appears in the play is that there is, as it were, an unknowable and perhaps you might hate the phrase, but organic quality to that appear to do with mathematics.
Yeah, I mean, I think unknowability of things. So it's rather alarming.
No. But I think one of the biggest revelations I had at university was when I studied girdles incompleteness theorem because this was the discovery in the 20th century that, you know, we thought mathematics was about knowing things, but actually what girdle shows using the idea of a strangely, the fact that mathematics can actually talk about itself and and actually prove its own limitations that within any system of mathematics and perhaps we should say within any system,
actually there will always be true statements that you cannot prove are true within that system, provided the system is complex enough. And that's, you know, that's at the heart of mathematics now. But I think absolutely you said that any system will always have its sort of unknowable unless it's so simple that it's not interesting. So the idea of a strange loop is absolutely this fact that we can prove about systems that there are things we will never know.
Victoria, yes, I agree. And I think I, you know, I look at I look at my my little dog, but I know that that dog will never be able to. To do mathematics that we'll never be able to speak French. Never be able to read a Latin poem. But I know that he's perfectly functioning as adult and in such things. I think that as a human being, it's a strange arrogance to think that I can. I can know everything because I'm a piece of biology. I'm a piece of complicated meat.
So the idea that I can, I can know everything there is seems more as I get older, more and more and more ridiculous. Because of course, I can't know everything because I am just an animal and animals can't know everything. And I, yes, I am, but more and more comfortable with that fact, actually. But just wants to come back briefly to the idea of India and the mathematics being more part of the culture.
I think in the West, I feel very strongly about my closing schools that we've got the idea that in order to enjoy mathematics, one must be very good at it. And I don't think that's true. I think that very small children enjoy mathematics in its pure simplicity because it's about patterns and it's about security and comfort. And the same thing, if you do something twice, the same thing will happen. And that's a marvellous thing.
And human beings look for patterns everywhere, and it seems to be a strange kind of irony. You can only enjoy something if you're really, really amazingly good at it. And then, of course, you'll never as good as the person who's left that little bit better than me. So I think it's a shame that we did that.
We children don't more enjoy, just enjoy doing mathematics, and I think small children do, and they're taught out of it in our society to think that it's only that people who are good who are allowed to have mathematics themselves. Well, I'm tempted to use some of the people who are listening to this to imagine that when we were improvising the disappearing number we tried, we could try to embody the character of different numbers. So what was the character of seven?
You know what kind of person was seven or what kind of you know, or five or six which which were the more boring ones? Which were the more interesting ones? We actually literally tried to put that in our bodies and then we tried to guess what you were.
You were characterising. And I think that's one of the remarkable things about this piece is that and it's led up to work that I think both of you have done and you've done Victoria and really wonderful work in in schools and with young people, which is to literally and Marcus to to to get people to enjoy mathematics by standing up and embodying it themselves. And you showed us, I remember in a wonderful exercise in the rehearsal process.
You showed us literally as we stood there, how we could, how one infinity could be bigger than another. So I take that away as a fond memory. Are you? Do you still do any of that that work out of it? This is because I'm interested in what this sort of work gives on to other people as well.
I've been working in schools since all the time we have been making this play, but since we made a disappearing number and really looking at patterns and letting children make patterns together in space, using rhythm and their bodies and their breath and each and the fact that they're together. And it's a way of exploring mathematics through the body and through through being together as an ensemble.
And I think it's very powerful, actually that sense of the children can have of working together with with certain rules and to create very beautiful patterns so that instead of answering a question that the teacher is asking about a piece of arithmetic, they are actually doing mathematics, whether they like it or not, with their bodies in the space together.
And I get huge amounts of pleasure as not because I think there's something very fundamental there about us being about about human beings, loving patterns and rhythm because of our biology. Yeah, I totally agree with that, and I think coming back to your point, Simon, about and Victoria, you mentioned as well the tragedy that our education system compartmentalise these subjects.
And I think that's always been my mission really to show that mathematics is is bubbling underneath everything, you know, music, it's got a history, it's got personality, but it also has theatre in it, which is what I hope this piece has shown. You're both absolutely brilliant. The play is brilliant. What a joy to be speaking with both of you. Thank you, Simon. Thank you, Simon.