Mary's Room

Overview

Mary's Room is an immersive dance experience based on the philosophical thought experiment that you can't truly know another person until we experience being them.

The thought experiment was invented by Australian analytic philosopher Frank Cameron Jackson, who was looking to find a way to argue against the phisicalistic idea that 'everything is physical' and that there is nothing 'over and above' the physical. Instead, Jackson wanted to show that there were certain  unmeasurable subjective qualities exist that can only be discovered 'through the conscious experience of an individual'. That even when we are in the exact same environment at the same time with the same information about it, our experience of what is happening will be different from someone standing next to us and that we have no idea how the other person experienced it.

The visual dance performance was created by Slovenian dance artist Neža Jamnikar, in collaboration with dancers Deborah Fletcher and Evie Logan.