On Tuesday 19th November at 7pm IJAD will be at Camden Proud, the old horse hospital. Proud is a truly unique venue situated in the heart of stables market, just walking distance from both Camden Town and Chalk Farm stations.

Whether you’re a regular member of the IJAD audience (online, at our IN-Finite performances or, of course on Twitter) or want to find out what it’s all about, join us on the 19th! Discover how we’re using tech to make our pieces more engaging and accessible, meet all the people behind the performances and mingle with the Creative Director, Producer, dancers, collaborators, trustees and superfans. Here’s your chance to ask the questions you’ve always wanted to!

Tickets are just £10 and all the proceeds go towards helping us fund future performances.

Tickets are available in advance by donating £10 through our Virgin Money Giving Page, (we will add you to the prepaid guestlist) or you can buy tickets on the door.

Claire and the IJAD trustees
IJAD

Phillip K Dick

(Hollywood films include Blade Runner(1982), Total Recall(1990) and Minority 

Report(2002), A Scanner Darkly (2006))

This is the final part three of my quotes that I hope to inspire you into finding 
science marvellous. Herbert was a philosophical wrangler, Asimov was 
fascinated by technology – Dick has far more interest in human to human 
machinations and how future advances will bring out the worse in mankind. 
He’s brilliantly dark. 



'It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.'

'My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression.'

'The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If 
you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must 
use them.'

'If you think this Universe is bad, you should see some of the others.'

'You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic 
condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, 
every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of 
creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere 
in the universe.'

'There will come a time when it isn't 'They're spying on me through my phone' 
anymore. Eventually, it will be 'My phone is spying on me'.'

'The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides taught that the only things 
that are real are things which never change... and the pre-Socratic Greek 
philosopher Heraclitus taught that everything changes. If you superimpose 
their two views, you get this result: Nothing is real.'

'There exists, for everyone, a sentence - a series of words - that has the power 
to destroy you. Another sentence exists, another series of words, that could 
heal you. If you're lucky you will get the second, but you can be certain of 
getting the first.'

'A man is an angel that has gone deranged.'

I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun 
out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we 
actually have does not meet my standards. Okay, so I should revise my 
standards; I'm out of step. I should yield to reality. I have never yielded to 
reality. That's what SF is all about. If you wish to yield to reality, go read 
Philip Roth; read the New York literary establishment mainstream bestselling 
writers….This is why I love SF. I love to read it; I love to write it. The SF writer 
sees not just possibilities but wild possibilities. It's not just 'What if' - it's 'My 
God; what if' - in frenzy and hysteria. The Martians are always coming.

Isaac Asimov 

( Hollywood Films include Bicentennial Man (1999) and I, Robot(2004) )

Isaac Asimov is probably the most well known sci fi author.
He wrote about how technology integrate in our lives. We’re still
fascinated by his work as his ethical ponderings about
the role of computing and robots which are become ever
more relevant as we achieve his vision – you’ll know his work 
on screen with Bicentennial Man and I Robot. I don’t think he’s a 
great writer of people, but great at foretelling massive scientific shifts.

'The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster 
than society gathers wisdom.'

'Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder 
critics and philosophers of today - but the core of science fiction, its essence 
has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.'

'It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor 
in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking 
into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.'

'Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost 
under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.'

'There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it 
everywhere.'

'Tell me why the stars do shine,

Tell me why the ivy twines,

Tell me what makes skies so blue,

And I'll tell you why I love you.'

----------------------------------------

'Nuclear fusion makes stars to shine,

Tropisms make the ivy twine,

Raleigh scattering make skies so blue,

Testicular hormones are why I love you.'

'I write for the same reason I breathe ... because if I didn't, I would die.'
				

What is Science Fiction? An exhibit at The British Library showed to make any attempt to form sense out the world using metaphor is sci-if and traced (extant proof) back to the Ancient Greek and Romans .

More recently we think of science fiction as the type which emerged from the 1900s where magazines such as Astounding Science Fiction and Thrill Book picked up a cult following and was primarily written by scientists. We now have a SyFy channel and a plethora of series on TV making wonder become a staple form of entertainment.

For me, sci-fi is primarily human. The genre uses the future to illustrate the human relationship we have with our physical world. Some writers, like Kim Stanley Robinson write prophetically. His books, Red, Blue and Green Mars are all written predictions after a career working as the Mars specialist for NASA. Other writers use futuristic settings which are outlandish to show what they believe to be the immutable human condition.

Science Fiction writers tend to be social commentators and dreamers which makes their books remarkably accessible. They’re visionaries who think massively outside their time and so, in celebration, I have collated quotes from three sci-fi writers who had quite an impact on me growing up – for the time in my life they appeared to the messages which profoundly jiggled around the way I thought about the world. I hope they you have a similar experience with their ponderings on life.

Frank Herbert Quotes

(Hollywood Films include Dune (1984 – starring Sting))

‘Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.’

‘The mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.’

‘A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.’

‘Nature does not make mistakes. Right and wrong are human categories.’

‘Do actions agree with words? There’s your measure of reliability. Never confine yourself to the words.’

‘A person needs new experiences. They jar something deep inside, allowing you to grow. Without them, it sleeps- seldom to awaken. The sleeper must awaken.’

‘Whether a thought is spoken or not it is a real thing and has powers of reality.’

‘The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.’

‘The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.’

‘A human being can stand any amount of pain.’

‘The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it.’

‘He who can destroy a thing, can control a thing.’

‘There is no escape – we pay for the violence of our ancestors.’

‘Truth suffers from too much analysis.’

‘There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.’

‘Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.’

‘If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.’

‘One of the best things to come out of the home computer revolution could be the general and widespread understanding of how severely limited logic really is.’

‘The difference between sentiment and being sentimental is the following: Sentiment is when a driver swerves out of the way to avoid hitting a rabbit on the road. Being sentimental is when the same driver, when swerving away from the rabbit, hits a pedestrian.’

And while we’re in the mood for pondering. This is what we’re are doing with In-Finite Space. We’re taking the mathematics of our world and interpreting our human relationship with physics through an exploration of our bodies and minds via a multi-media performance. You can contribute by answering our daily questions about space on #InfiniteReach in whatever format you like (verse, image, video). I would love to know what your favourite sci-fi quotes tickle your mind (Dr Who has some great writers) – let us have them and see if you can spot them in our dance!

“AWE: an experience of such perceptual vastness you literally have to reconfigure you mental models of the world to assimilate it”

Enjoy this video, especially if your brain needs a kick. It looks at the science of new experiences and our responsibility to have them.

I like to think of Jason Silva’s Shots of Awe as big thoughts packaged for our soundbite culture.

I don’t think ‘sound bite’ is bad – we train our brains to have fast data intake which is incredible useful and doesn’t stop us enjoying languorous fiction. I’d love forcing my brain in to Baudrillard – but I don’t have the time anymore – so Jason Silva’s great – his thoughts resonate in my head in no time I have now replaced my cigarette break with a philosophy break.

I hope your world is as touched by these two point four nine minutes as mine is.

Camilla
@camillarts

Light Year – I love meaningful paradoxes.

I recently wrote a post about our relationship with words and spoke about how we use them in performance – but I started thinking more about the first part of the post regarding etymology as I love the word ‘lightyear’.

When you start to learn about space, distance and time become related. (And then you start thinking about time travel but that’s a whole other project ;] ) A light year is the distance light travels in one year. It’s a unit of distance rather than time. I love that humans are so relational in our speaking. If we can’t describe something (like High Street) we describe it by naming it to the most similar thing we know – like pom de la terre. Surnames were professional led (Haddad is one of the most common Arabic – meaning Smith). Surname joiners such as such as ‘bar’ ‘von’ and ‘del’ all state progeny. Descriptive words degrade over time, for ‘Grape Lane’ it was due to ideas o decency (google that one – it’s dirty).

So when I hear ‘light year’ I cannot imagine almost 6 million, million miles (9.4607 × 1012 I can’t imagine 6 million, million of anything.

To my partner’s dismay I have very little grasp of maths or science and when he starts using phrases like ‘to the power of’ I switch off (sorry Greg!) and just think – it’s really frelling big. I can get my head around a year. I can get my head around the fact that light is*really* fast. It works in my head. It’s poetic. Hearing that our nearest solar system Alpha Centuri is 4.367 light years away just makes me go ‘wrahhhhh’. If you like that feeling, I thoroughly recommend The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. It’s a very intense (read visceral) novel which is philosophical and immense. As a reader of science fiction you kinda become immune to the amazingness of space travel – Russell’s communication of it appeals to science thinkers but also dreamers like me with the emotional impact. The characters travel there and back in what is only )) months to them. Which is 40 years for earth, for the people they love, for the lives they knew.It’s a stark reminder of how interconnected space and distance are, although it doesn’t really affect our everyday lives much except for the additional 20 minutes it takes me to commute in trainers or high heels (IJAD’s office is up a hill).

I’d love to know if you ever feel affected by the time/distance thing – do you fly across timezones much? How does your linear perception of experience cope? I have a few more things I’m curious about too – indulge me on #InfiniteReach

– Can you imagine 6 million, million of anything? If so, what?

One of the things I love about new things whether they’re people, products or discoveries is that they highlight our cultural relationship with language.

Latin and Greek are of course the standard fall-to options; it’s amazing fun to annoy etymologists by mixing them up in words such as ‘automobile’, ‘dysfunction’ and did you know ‘octopodes’ is the correct plural of ‘octopus’?

We have a very intimate relationship with words – they’re collective agreements of meaning and I’m sure we’ve all felt failure about the ineffable qualities of emotions such as ‘love’ and the feelings of ‘longing’ – which supports a whole music industry.

You can’t pin a language down; we hear tabloid headlines that the word ‘database’ replaces ‘foxglove’ in a children’s dictionary, ‘twerk’ enters common parlance or an artist coins a new phrase like Dr Suess’s ‘nerd’.

Ralph Fiennes claimed that Twitter is ruining the English language and he’s not alone in thinking this. What do you think? I lean to the side that whatever aids accurate expression of our personal interpretation of life is valid. I saw ‘FML’ in the Evening Standard the other day – and I thought it was quite eloquent. Twitter is probably the most recent mass-modifier of our mumblings (as TV or radio were to their times) and IJAD’s really interested in the relationship it has with our work. As you know, we’re interpreting what you tweet or write to us on 30th immediately within the show, as well as your sharings inspiring the development work itself – as you can see here (hyperlink to vine).

The movement IJAD uses aims to have meaning without words. To reproduce the complex nature of a feeling within a context so that language is not required to speak to your soul – or any pre-existing understanding of dance vocab – that’s why we absorb many cultural experiences and touch many nations around the world (we had 11 countries in one night in March 2013) and join them together.

We’re getting a lot of poems which we’re finding electrifying to work with in the studio. I tend to think of a writer’s relationship with words similar to a photographer – the subject is there – but the wordsmith or photographer selects only certain things to reveal which makes reality more and less than what it is.

IJAD starts with universal themes – and after asking you what you think – ends with a highly culturally specific piece of work. We’re asking you to lend the way you see the world to us and watch as we weave it into a powerful wordlessness.

Follow #InfiniteReach – we’re asking what inspires you about space at the moment.

And if language is your thing, here’s a quote from Stephen Fry:
“Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-up wipette. Language is the breath of God, the dew on a fresh apple, it’s the soft rain of dust that falls into a shaft of morning sun when you pull from an old bookshelf a forgotten volume of erotic diaries; language is the faint scent of urine on a pair of boxer shorts, it’s a half-remembered childhood birthday party, a creak on the stair, a spluttering match held to a frosted pane, the warm wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy, the hulk of a charred Panzer, the underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl, cobwebs long since overrun by an old Wellington boot.”

Rehearsals have started and you’re invited! Come and see how it all works…

Where? The Science Museum

When? 21st October and 28th October 2013 between 10.30am and 2pm.

What happens in a rehearsal is pretty fun. Sometimes it can be intense and the focus is overwhelming, sometimes we can’t stop laughing, sometimes we discover new things about ourselves. We want you to see this because it’s an important part of the creative process – a performance doesn’t just happen. Originality and expression evolve and we watch those paths, selecting the ones which we think you’ll find most interesting.

Come take a look. We hope it will inspire and excite you. We hope it’ll demystify what happens on stage. If you’re artsy, you’re more than welcome to bring your camera, sketchbook or whatever you love.

All welcome! Tweet at @ijaddance if you’re planning to come and we’ll send you directions

Camilla
@camillarts