By Mario Fenech
There are many great cinematic representations of time such as the 1960 George Pal version of the Time Machine and from the same period the Time Travellers ( which was remade as the inferior Journey to the Centre of Time some years later) had some interesting juxtapositions near the end. But the sequence that has stuck in my head is from Kubrick’s 2001 a Space Odyssey, where a shattering glass is used to convey the passage of subjective time for Bowman. For the majority of living things, time is a subjective concern, a relative few spend most of their lives looking at the cosmic scheme of things — philosophers, scientists and writers.
Aristotle differed from Plato and over the centuries there were many unique interpretations ranging from bleak existential views to epic works comfortingly tied to Madeleines. Our concept of time is reinforced by popular culture. A 1960 film titled When the Clock Strikes, is about a criminal condemned to be executed at midnight. It’s a stormy night and an assortment of characters converge on Cady’s place not far from the prison where the convicted murderer will be hung. Cady’s is a convenient place to shelter from the storm for a juror who is wracked with guilt that he might have sent an innocent man to the gallows. He has an opportunity to convey his concerns when the warden calls on the way to prison. Also there is a woman pretending to be the wife of the condemned man and somehow a man struggles through the stormy night and arrives at Cady’s to announce that he is the guilty one but he is too late to stop the execution as the phone lines are down. The rest of the movie deals with a plan to somehow get the stolen money the deceased man had hidden. This is a good example of how time hangs over our existence, providing motivation and sometimes pushing us to the limits of endurance rather than be beaten by the relentless arrow of time.
Newton ‘s Universe served us well until the electron microscope focused attention on the underlying structure of the Universe. No longer could we accept that the Universe functioned like clockwork as in the languorous days gone by. Even Einstein knew that, for want of a better word, ‘spooky’ things were happening at a sub-atomic level. The Universe is essentially vast amounts of information. In the 20th century, devices were invented to record sound and visual information . These devices proved invaluable to scientific research as well as arts a and entertainment. Scientific and creative minds found ways of mixing, compressing and manipulating information in much the same way that information goes through various transformations in a cosmic setting such as event horizon of a black hole for instance. The Universe is composed of sequences of information , timelines branching in all directions. Some entities will follow one timeline while others will sample multiple timelines. On a quantum level, time foam can occur under the right conditions and elsewhere there are shards of time and no doubt there is time that resembles the contents of a document shredder.
This is the 21st century and we should have mastered time with all the technological marvels at our disposal. Modern transport can get us from A to B so much quicker, at least it would if only governments would spend enough on infrastructure so we did not spend so much time in traffic jams. AI should be facilitating a more a meaningful existence but algorithms can be time wasters when corporations use them to maximise profits. At a time when there are record numbers of lonely people someone comes up with the bright idea of creating a virtual reality where participants interact with avatars creating another wedge between people and the real world. Such virtual worlds can attract people predisposed to such immersion. Gambling addicts can spend days, weeks, years, gambling on poker machines. The tragedy is playing out right now as these individuals lose their partners, families and souls to the machines. It’s a limbo world where nothing meaningful happens. Lost time.
Scientists say the concept of time was invented by us to create a sense of order to our existence but is time not a thing? We should make the most of whatever devices are at our disposal to improve our lives and the lives of those around us. A meaningful existence is one that acknowledges that we are creatures like all other creatures on this planet and we are sustained by this planet and the complex ecosystems around us.
The answers to the mysteries of time might be solved by the collective wisdom of the world’s indigenous people. It might also come some time in the future in conversations with sperm whales at a depth of three thousand metres.
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Mario Fenech is an artist, writer. His visual art is mainly sculptures and had many exhibitions around Melbourne over the years. His writing has been essentially science fiction ideas and most were short stories although he self-published a novella in 2013 titled, ‘The Rock in Room Ten’. He is currently two thirds into his latest science fiction story.
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