An Entangled Thread (July 2022)

Welcome back once more, all! It's been a painfully hot week here in the UK, to the point that much of our national travel network had to shut down for safety reasons, but fear not; this blog is one train that the heat can't stop! 

This week we're coming at you with another edition in our spotlight series, this time focusing on someone a little closer at hand.  That's right, you've guessed it; today's subject will be myself, your hitherto nameless narrator! 

And so I suppose a short introduction is in order. My name is Duncan Leggat, and I am a postdoctoral researcher working at the University of Leeds on the Song of the Female Textile Worker, past, present and future project. My duties - beyond the writing of this blog - include liaising with our various partners, keeping up to date with their developments, and, eventually, analysing the data that the project collects. 

Now, my journey to this position is perhaps not what you would expect. It might surprise you to discover that my training was not in performance, the creative industries, or even in humanities at all. Although I try to flex my creative muscles where I can - I am involved in a number of ongoing writing and musical projects - it has hitherto never been the source of my livelihood.  

No, I was, in fact, once a particle physicist by trade. My PhD thesis was on the production of single top quarks produced in association with electroweak vector bosons at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN [1], a study that I continued for a number of years as a postdoctoral researcher in the field. If that sounds rather unintelligible, then worry not, even to the experts in the room the subjects discussed within can be a bit much. 

Indeed, it was not my academic training that brought me to the Song future project, but rather my interest in Chinese culture. 

Once upon a time, my sister was an English teacher living in China. I visited her on multiple occasions, and we would tour the country under her guidance. Of course, we visited the usual tourist sites - the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Terracotta warriors, Shenzhou's gardens - but what was almost more fascinating to us was visiting places off the beaten path. The side of China that we rarely see in the West; ordinary people going about their everyday lives. The locals we would find there were always very accommodating and warm, even if we were not always sure what they were actually saying!  

In many ways it was reassuring to see how much we all had in common - everyone is just living as well as they can. Uncovering and even encouraging these commonalities between the UK and China through performance and the capturing of stories is one of the fundamental goals of the Song future project, and certainly one that I am excited to be a part of.  

Many years after the adventures with my sister, I was given the opportunity to work for a physics institute in Beijing, and I jumped at the chance. Although my time was largely spent working remotely at the experiments on which I worked, I was fortunate enough to spend a sizeable part of my employment living at the central campus in Beijing. There, I was able to continue my travels, and even learn a little of the local culture and language.  

One thing that really struck me almost immediately in that time was just how integrated technology, and in particular smart phones and mobile applications, had become in Chinese culture.  

When I first moved there in the mid-2010s, I had never owned a smartphone. There was no particular reason why not, I didn't have anything personal against them, I'd just grown used to my old school phone, and didn't see the point in upgrading. It sent messages, it made calls - what more did I need from it? I had gone through university, and even completed my PhD without really feeling like I was missing anything. 

But stepping out of the plane and into the heat of the Beijing summer, it became almost instantly apparent that this was no longer going to be a tenable solution. Even back then, everything was done through smart phones, and apps downloaded to them. Text was no longer enough; an application was needed. Paying bills? Use an app. 

Indeed, long before the pandemic effectively did away with cash in our society, it had already become all but extinct in urban China. I remember handling banknotes on only a handful of occasions, and coins even less - everything is paid for using a phone. Although this is becoming more and more common here in the UK now, its rapid and universal uptake in the Chinese market was quite remarkable.  

It seems reasonable, then, to me at least, that embracing technology - and in particular mobile devices and applications therein - would be an excellent way to bridge the gap between our two cultures. Developing memorable and engaging experiences - like the Song future project - should appeal to audiences in both the UK and China, and engage both groups to find a common ground between them. Indeed, how far this shared participation can go is one of the fundamental questions of the research project.  

It will be particularly interesting for me to see the sorts of demographic that we engage with in both regions. In my time in China, the younger generations seemed to be more accepting of and open to Western culture, and I am intrigued to see if this is borne out by the data we can collect. Similarly in our UK audience, discovering who exactly we can engage with the most will be a fascinating outcome of the project. 

There is also something perhaps educational about the project that piques my interest. Sharing our stories in order to bring communities together - to me at least - echoes the rather extensive outreach work conducted at CERN. There, it was always very important to engage with the local population, explain what we do, and resolve any misunderstandings or misgivings with the facility. I've always tried to be involved in this outreach where possible, and the Song future project feels like a natural successor to this. 

The real expertise that I developed at CERN, and what I am bringing to the Song future project, however, are those in computing and data handling. The day-to-day life of a high energy physicist involves a lot of data extraction, manipulation, and analysis, and even more computer programming.  

As such, I will be working closely with our friends and colleagues at Human and Megaverse as they develop and build the experience, learning from their expertise in the field and offering my own advice where I can. Although I am familiar and comfortable with computer coding itself, XR [2] development is something of a new area for me, and so I am excited to learn and grow this particular skill.  

Once the performance is over, I will then set about analysing the collected data. The data will, perhaps unsurprisingly, be fundamentally different from that collected at the Large Hadron Collider - particle interactions are hardly similar to reflections on cultural heritage, after all! - but the end goal of exploring it and uncovering its story remains unchanged. It will come with its own unique challenges and intrigues, that I am ready and excited to explore. Ultimately, one of the aims of the Song future project is to collate this data, and use it to better understand the evolution away from heavy industries, and into the creative sectors we now see thriving, and what similarities we can find here between the UK and China.  

But of course, that data is still some way off. In the meantime, I have been enjoying working with everyone involved, and absorbing their unique enthusiasms for the project. The employees at Leeds Industrial Museum, keen to engage with wider audiences and discover further stories. Our colleagues at the digital partners, looking to push the envelope on digital experiences, and embrace the latest technologies. The team at the University, exploring how these developments can spark further connections with Chinese partners.  

Our motives might be diverse, but our end goal is the same; an engaging and powerful Song future performance.  

I hope you're excited for it too.

Footnotes

[1] CERN is the largest particle physics laboratory in Europe, situated on the border of France and Switzerland near Geneva. As an interesting historical aside, although CERN was once an acronym (Centre Européen de la Recherche Nucléaire), the name of the laboratory has since been changed to exactly CERN, with no ascribed acronym.
[2] Extended reality (XR) is the encompassing term for the use of technology to add elements to reality. It includes augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), with which many are more familiar.