The Anderson Localisation is performing in the city this weekend during the final days of this year’s Dunedin Arts Festival.
Technical designer Martyn Roberts said the performance was an interactive story about science, history, time and space — aided by the use of an app called PickPath.
Participants would use the storytelling application, designed by a theatre company in Auckland, to complete activities as they explored Dunedin’s No Name Alley, next to Bond and Police Sts.
The story culminated in the completion of the Anderson Localisation, a real-world phenomenon in quantum physics.
No Name Alley was "like a little step back in time" and a reminder of the city’s industrial past, Mr Roberts said.
"It’s a real kind of hodgepodge of visual cultural references and also physical reminders of our city’s history."
Complete with seven live actors, the performance took participants on a journey into the past to before the alleyway was established, and invited them to engage with the space.
Dunedin was a beautiful city whose heritage could often be taken for granted, he said.
"When you actually scratch below the surface and begin to explore some of the history or some of the kind of qualities of these historical places, you really begin to appreciate the age of our city.
"We are probably one of the last big cities left in New Zealand that still has quite a lot of Victorian infrastructure in terms of its building stock, and that is an opportunity right there for us to celebrate as a city and to find opportunities to really tell the story of what that city’s history is."
Theatre was a good vehicle to tell the story of a city, Mr Roberts said.
He hoped participants had fun and "might just be tickled" with the science and theatre to learn a bit more about the space.
The Anderson Localisation is performing tomorrow and Sunday.
