Touching Space
31 October 2008—19 January 2009
Ground floor: free
A Royal Academy of Arts Education Department project
A life-sized holographic presentation on the world’s largest 'holo pod', Touching Space began with a series of exploratory workshops with science and arts students at Ashmole School, London and St Xavier’s in Mumbai.
Both sets of students were given an identical set of creative propositions introducing them to performance languages and mathematical ideas including multidimensionality, irrationality of the square root of 2 and convergent and divergent series. They were asked to express these mathematical ideas with movement and text propositions.
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The students were encouraged to think creatively about physical and virtual communication and to leave space for half of the performance to be created on the other side of the world by another group of students. This attempt to touch space led to unknowable interactions with imagined collaborators and the discovery of strategic collisions and surprises.
- Ashmole School is a GSK inspire school, part of INSPIRE – (Innovative Scheme for Post-docs in Research and Education), a programme run in partnership with Imperial College, London, which aims to improve achievement in science education in schools and increase the uptake of science subjects in higher education.
- St Xavier’s College is an institution whose ethos is to build a more just and humane world. It is affiliated to the University of Bombay and entrusted with the task of preparing students for degrees in Arts, Science and Commerce.
Students from Ashmole School 
Students from St Xavier’s College, Mumbai
This project was made possible with the help and collaboration of Complicite, a constantly evolving ensemble of performers and collaborators, led by Artistic Director Simon McBurney, Activ-8 3D, a world leader in 3D holographic projection systems, and MetFilm, based in Ealing Studios, which comprises a cutting-edge post-production facility, the UK's fastest growing film school and an award-winning feature film production company.
Supported by 
GSK and the Royal Academy have received an investment from A&B to develop their creative partnership. The A&B Investment Programme is funded by Arts Council England.
3D-technology and systems provided by: 
Created in collaboration with members of Complicite.
- Director Catherine Alexander
- Mathematical Director Victoria Gould
- Producer Natasha Freedman
- Sound Design Gareth Fry
St Xavier’s College, Mumbai
- Sayali Phadke
- Crescens Lemos
- Anirrban Mukherjii (Tip)
- Mugdha Sawant
- Sampoorna Sarkar
- Alisha Pinto
- Manas Joshi
- Arjun Jagdish
Ashmole School, London
- Falak Hussain
- Shweta Ghelani
- Sandeep Ghelani
- Anna Savva
- Pola Stavrinou
- Georgina Stormfield
- Athina Kontos
