Science and stories are commonly seen to be different. Whilst science is categorised as ‘factual’, stories are ‘fictional’; science is ‘real’ and stories ‘imagined’. These categorisations are important – they identify that knowledge has different dimensions; science offers one piece of the puzzle titled ‘This is the world and how YOU fit in’, its contribution based on measurement, replicability, and predictability. Stories offer a different ‘fragment’. They provide education through entertainment, creating ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’, quests and conflicts, all the while conveying ideas about good, bad, right and wrong to their audience.

Identifying these different knowledge ‘fragments’ is, in one sense, an abstract, purely intellectual exercise. But if we consider them in the context of Cathays Park, we can bring this exercise to life. What have stories, told through TV and film, got to do with universities – seats of scientific learning? What have stage sets got to do with real life?

If you consider your reaction to these questions, we can begin to see that the case of Cathays Park suggests how the categorisation of ‘real’ and ‘imagined’ not simply identifies a difference between these two forms of knowledge, it also places them in a hierarchy. Scientific knowledge is often seen as ‘good knowledge’, whilst imagined stories are ‘just’ make believe. Even if we accept this distinction, we may agree that both remain partial, neither is natural, and they remain good at what they do. Yet if we look further into the case of Cathays Park, we can suggest that both the real and the reel, despite their differences, can be productive in combination.

Rather than keeping them apart, or seeking to impose a hierarchy between them (good science or mere stories), this project explores how the reel influences the real (and vice versa), and how the (b)order between them is crossed and remixed in different ways. Just like Will in His Dark Materials, we can slice through the (b)order that holds these worlds apart. In a way, therefore, this project seeks to play with the supposed differences between science and stories – it seeks to explore the divide between them, in other words, it seeks to slice open the ‘fourth wall’.