Future Shock! – How popular culture views the future

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The future is coming, or so they say. And as it approaches us head-on, we can do little to avoid collision with its impending certainty. I for one am looking forward to the invention of hoverboards in 2015, but am still nervous every time I turn on my computer of the day when robots rule the earth.

There are various artistic visions of how the future will pan out. In films and books we have been shown everything from sleek space-age technological dreams to dark, zombie-infested post-apocalyptic worlds, from grim cyberpunk metropolises to harmonic ages of enlightenment. We have seen visions of utopias and dystopias but through our myopia can only glimpse the world of tomorrow.

The uncertainty of the future leads to the endearing notion that it can be shaped in whatever way we choose. Creative individuals show us their perspectives, observing what they see around them and dictating a potential future from what they experience.

In the early 20th century, a glutton of creators began to examine the reshaping of society at the end of the second millennium. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World paints a picture of a future showing a society monitored and controlled by the addiction to drugs and the genetic engineering of human beings. Huxley was critical of the growing apathy and hedonism in American society (particularly in California) and wrote this book as a satire on how the world could be if this behaviour became mainstream. Fritz Lang’s celebrated masterpiece Metropolis deals with a jarred future where the gap between wealthy and poor in a supermodern city is virtually un-bridgeable. The concept was in response to poor working conditions faced by the lower classes at this time. In 1984, George Orwell observed the oppressive nationalist uprisings in 1940s Europe. He studied the dictatorships of Stalin and Franco, and watched how propaganda was used in World War II as a political tool to rally masses of individuals into a system of belief under the autocratic rule in a totalitarian state.

The autocracy of Orwell’s future, the ovine subservience of Huxley’s and the gap in wealth and power in Metropolis are all visions embedded in current affairs from when the works were created. They are preoccupied with history and political movements, and show possible ultimate directions that society can take if totalitarian-style political systems are accepted by the masses and implemented. It is interesting to take these three works and see how sections of them were near accurate predictions. Certainly Fritz Lang’s perception of the growing gap between rich and poor is poignant to those protesting in Occupy movements throughout the world. And of course Orwell is often cited when we see video cameras on street corners or hear bleating monotonous pop music on the radio.

Later 20th century models saw the dystopia taken tongue-in-cheek. The dank and dreary future worlds of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and 12 Monkeys play with the director’s frustrations at an overabundance of social order and red-tape. In both films the protagonists find themselves bound by rules and a level of order that is so meticulously ordained it is uninhabitable to the rebellious human spirit.

Another alternative to the future model developed in the second half of the 20th century. The end of civilisation altogether began to be toyed with by creative practitioners. George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) harked back to biblical stories of the apocalypse – the end of the human race. “When hell is full, the dead shall walk the earth,” utters a preacher at the beginning of the film, as the undead begin to rise and slaughter the human race. Like earlier futuristic writing, Romero’s is a social observation, looking at the decay of society into an anarchic mess. The idea of zombies and the spread of the end of society took a turn in the 21st Century after we witnessed the spread of HIV and other blood-transmitted pathogens. Rather than the dead reanimating, the zombie genre now often deals with a pandemic that spreads to end society, a-la 28 Days Later (2002).

Comparatively, another apocalyptic end comes in the form of war or nuclear fallout. This model deals with the disasterous end of human civilisation at our own hands. David Brin’s The Postman hints at war as the end of civilisation, but blames the survivors for their own downfall. Video game series Fallout creates a post-nuclear apocalyptic vision as society attempts to rebuild in the ashes.

Interestingly, Fallout, although a recent game, plays on the 1950s-style “Modern Future” theme harking back to Disneyland’s Tommorrow-land area and attractions such as the Monsanto House of the Future. In the duck-and-cover fear-mongering of the Cold War era, the nuclear dystopia emerged. The use of this mixed past/future style in Fallout borrows from the era when the idea first grew roots, but places the story in the future. This is similar to the Steampunk genre, which gives historical fiction (usually Victorian) access to modern or futuristic apparatuses like electricity or automatons. Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s film adaptation of Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, is also interesting as it embraces the film noir style to ground the movie in the past while juxtaposing the style with imagery of the future. Like Fallout or Steampunk, this blends two eras together to create a future that relates to the past directly.

Not all future depictions are bleak. The 2009 film Moon by Duncan Jones depicts a world where energy is abundant, powered by moon stations. Although the film centers on the discontentment of the protagonist as a lonely employee providing this energy, it hints at the peaceful unity of a utopian world of wealth and abundance.

In Science Fiction the future is often portrayed as life in outer space, with technological advancement leading to a wealth of human comforts. This can range from the semi-dystopic visions in Wall-E to the more fantasised premonitions outlined in Star Trek or Star Wars. But even these stories continue to deal with contemporary themes. Wall-E is concerned with the environmental destruction of the earth and the complacency of society. Star Trek features a comprehensive assortment of alien creatures that mimic the social structures of current societies.

Each future compiled by our cultural masterminds is in essence an amalgamation of their present, their teachings from history and their predictions of the possible future outcomes. As the weight of the Occupy movement is hammered home, more analysis of the disparity in division of wealth may lead to cultural investigators returning to the theme of disparity of wealth as in Metropolis or H.G Wells’ The Time Machine. Or perhaps the relentless advancement of Apple innovations (we can only presume Steve Jobs left a notebook behind) and Google’s cornering of the online stratosphere could lead to Blade Runner or The Matrix style technological dystopias being produced. The strongest and most recent sample of futuristic creativity I have come across is the fantastic interactive online page, Collapsus, which deals with the current energy crisis.

The future that is shown to us by popular culture will always be constrained by the limitations of imagination. We can only predict possible outcomes that seem plausible based on what we currently understand of the present. Erratic events like the spread of HIV or the detonation of the first atomic bombs will always alter future predictions to take in these new variables

Still, as a society we are the creators of the future. Cultural formats can give us a glimpse of an idea, but it is people who will make the future. Whether we follow these cultural messages by donning a Guy Fawkes mask on Wall Street or turning off a light in a room you are not using, or we simply exist with one eye on our own future lives, the future is in the hands of those in the present.

As for the writers and creators, it is impossible to predict what futures they will come up with next.

All photography is my own and subject to copyright unless stated, please credit any reproductions to this blog or contact (contactmoonunderwater@gmail.com) for more information.

Blink and You’ll Miss It: Events on the Internet

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perennial |pəˈrenēəl|

1640s, “evergreen,” formed in English from L. perennis “lasting through the year (or years),”
adjective
lasting or existing for a long or apparently infinite time; enduring
• (of a plant) living for several years

Some things last a long time. Others are over in an instant, as they pass from the near future into the recent past. This piece concerns the former. Some occurrences seem to become mainstays overnight. Although certainly nothing lasts forever, some events can span lifetimes or generations.

Ice ages have come and gone since humanity’s ancestors took to this place. Ruins from over 5,000 years ago still stand on hilltops at Carrowkeel. Italian paintings from the 15th Century adorn the walls of grand museums.

Last Sunday I put up three reviews of live shows that have given me shivers in the last few years, Anna Calvi, Caribou and Halves. Something struck me about the nature of these spectacles, and I began to consider events in relation to the internet. A blog post I read recently dealt with the idea that once you put something on the internet, it’s there forever. Maybe we are entering an unending digital life from an analog history, and if that is true, then the art of events on the internet could become the only art that we experience.

OK Go have made a fine art out of their internet music videos. Every one has gone viral, and if you haven’t seen their back-catalogue yet then you’re in for a treat. In their most recent video, the ambitious 4-piece took on the project in the YouTube link above with sponsorship from Chevorlet. The video sees the band take on two miles of dusty track creating sounds from staged objects played with appendages attached to the car. (On a side-note, if this is the Detroit motor industry’s marketing campaign to drag it from the gutter then more of the same please!)

The reactions that I received while showing this video to others, and the immediate one that I had myself was “Is this authentic?” “Did they cheat?” “Are those sounds really coming from those pianos?” etc. I wrote somewhere recently about the value that we place on the “realness” of an event. OK Go pride themselves on their one-take videos; creating a perennial event from the chaotic ephemeral. They made sure to include links to the making of the video to reassure skeptics. But why do people value this authenticity so highly, and would this video not be just as amazing even if it is full of cuts and dubs (as it most likely is)?

This emphasis on the authenticity of technique stretches beyond the popular rise of the internet. Blur made a similar statement when they went to sleep for their 1998 video to No Distance Left to Run, claiming it was genuine sleep with “no funny stuff”.

There appears to be relevance attached to the “realness” of an event when documented in film or video. If it is staged or faked using editing techniques, onlookers often seem dubious. Images that are doctored in Photoshop, no matter how well done, have caused a stir in photo competitions. Sure, Photoshop mess-ups can be funny, but photoshop is a genuine technique in photography now, just as retouching and darkroom manipulation was in the history of photography. Perhaps it is an aversion to new technology that makes us shy away from editing techniques as part of the artistic process. Or it may be simply an emotional reaction of not liking to get tricked. But on the internet, where our perceptions are altered, why we value the authenticity of these things may boil down to a more philosophical reasoning.

To quote Kant, “all change is the alteration of substances”. Kant was referring to our perceptions of time, and how changes in substance allow us to perceive the existence of time. To add this theory to this argument, it could be suggested that the perennial documentation of things via the internet distorts our view on time, and how time passes. How can we document time passing if these events are here online forever? This temporal distortion can be unsettling, as it alters our perception of what is “real”, similar to how altered Photoshop images, no matter how realistic, can be irksome when discovered to have been doctored.

The idea of the perennial nature of the internet has been embraced by groups like OK Go, who value the lasting existence of their work on YouTube or Vimeo. Some visual art has also taken the leap from museum-permanence to perennial internet-dom. Sculptur Jason deCaires Taylor creates permanent underwater installations that are easier viewed on his website through photography than physically through wearing a skuba-suit. The sculptures teem with algae after time, and this is part of the process of making that Taylor employs.

Scupture by Jason deCaires Taylor, image courtesy of the artist’s website. Click for link.

But are these not real art? By creating things that cannot be physically experienced or embraced, the artists may be limiting their artwork’s capacity for physical interaction, or they may ask for a new sort of engagement. Artist Rafaël Rozendaal has taken the internet on as a medium, and creates interactive online artworks. He has created a large collection of online works on his website that engage the viewer in a multitude of ways. Sometimes the solutions are obvious, other times trial and error leads the way, but each piece is engaging and challenging and can create an inquisitive journey full of experience and memory.

This piece is not written to erase the magnificence of real-world event-based moments. It is simply an observation on how our idea of perennial features are observed and documented through new media.

So the internet may be perennial, but can be questioned in relation to its authenticity in time.

Some things last a long time. Others are over in an instant, as they pass from the near future into the recent past.

As a celebration of the perennial this post will stay on the internet forever.

Caribou at NASA, Reykjavik (Tuesday, June 28, 2011)

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Caribou are an enigma. The band perform with an elaborate amount of gusto live but seem to lack impact on recording. Caribou is Canadian multi-instrumentalist David Snaith and his live stage crew (i.e. Ryan Smith, Brad Webel and John Schmersal).

The most recent album, Swim, was a catchy electronic mish-mash, but does not withstand extended listens and seems to get lost in it’s own tame mixing and recording. However, live Caribou hit hard. The full band create a wash of energy and vitality that contradicts the album completely. They played a relatively intimate show in NASA, Reykjavik in June 2011.

Sinfang at NASA on the night

Supported by the exciting and engaging Icelandic act Sin Fang Bous (the solo project of Sindri Már Sigfússon of Seabear) the night started brightly, with the local crowd encouraging Sin Fang’s loops and riffs and catchy upbeat songs. Caribou’s signature stage arrangement, with the drums at the front of the stage, were already in place during the Icelander’s performance.

NASA is an intimate venue with a limited capacity. The stage is on a raised platform in front of a large dance-floor with wings on either side that fill up quickly for the eagerly anticipated gig. After Sin Fang and a brief intermission Caribou emerged.

This was dancing music of the highest order. Caribou are dynamic and animated live, spurred on by Snaith’s adrenalised drumming at the front of the stage. The gig had an immediate impact, and the crowd moved, jumped, cheered and alighted at Caribou’s electric performance (pun intended).

Laptop samples, drums, percussion, guitar and bass were the weapons of choice. Snaith stood on percussion, vocals and synth. Drums led the foreground, and the bass and guitar were an irregular background addition. Broad visuals on a large backdrop showed Caribou’s emblematic circle swirl and transform in colour and texture from a projected source. Lights flashed and flickered dramatically.

The gig was an unstoppable powerhouse of electronic music. It maintained a consistent energy from start to finish, communicating the broad array of Caribou’s musical ensemble to the feisty audience.

How Caribou never seem to impact on recording is baffling. Although they have received positive reviews, my own feeling is that Caribou’s albums never seem to hold their weight over an extended period, and get lost in the recent international catalogue of excellent electronic music. The songs lack lustre and seem to fall down in their immediacy and excitement, leaving the albums somewhat trailing. Contrary to their recorded work however, the band are powerful and encompassing live.

The show boasted terrific lighting and excellent sound, and the Icelandic audience were educated and receptive. The gig had been cancelled in May due to flights being grounded after volcanic ash entered the air, but the rescheduled show was still a sell-out or close to it.

An extended encore of bright anthem Sun sealed the deal on a reverberating night from the exciting four-piece. The movement and elasticity of the crowd by the time the show ended was overwhelming. Caribou prove their mettle live, justifying their recent call to support Radiohead in upcoming dates.

My personal reaction to the gig was to witness an emphasis on the importance of the impact of live music. This was the second time that I had seen Caribou live, the previous time was at a festival performance in 2010. On both occasions the band excelled. The live performance is punchy, helped by the encompassing lights and projections that assist the show in becoming more than just a musical performance, but a visual spectacle too. However, as stated, the recordings never match the intensity of the live shows. The immediacy of Caribou is unforgettable, and they show a stance on live music that can be dissembled and examined to justify a live viewing.

Halves at The Model, Sligo (Friday November 5, 2010)

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Halves are one of the emerging scene of outstanding Irish music acts. Alongside a host of other swirling-noisemakers, Halves stand out from the crowd with their infectious melodies and brooding compositions.

After travelling to Montreal to record their first full release a full two years after the band first broke onto the Irish music scene, Halves departed on a brief tour of Ireland. Known to the country’s music aficionados but still something of a mystery to those outside of it, they have grown in reputation thanks to a host of laudable live performances and gained notice at festival dates in recent years.

The Model, Sligo can be a difficult venue. There is a high seating capacity in the Black Box performance room, but Sligo is a relatively small town with a modest audience for up-and-coming music. The ceiling in the room is high, and the stage is wide. This often leaves artists daunted by the vast emptiness of the room when they perform at the foot of the cascading seats.

Halves faced this challenge head-on. They were greeted by a sparse but dedicated crowd, with scattered music-lovers dotted either side of the diagonal aisle that cuts the venue’s seating in half, looking down in anticipation of a high profile gig.

They did not disappoint. With an ensemble of instruments that included drums, guitar, bass, keyboard, sampler, bells, trombone, synthesizer, laptop, and (bizarrely wonderful) a baby grand piano, Halves took to the stage and generated the atmosphere for the night. The five band-members looked almost smothered by their broad array of equipment, but they moved around it freely with the delicacy and awareness of their common stage arrangement. Listeners were enveloped, immediately haunted by the combination of visuals that the band had compiled and overpowering music.

The visuals were essential to the overall atmosphere of the gig. Most of what appeared on the large backdrop that dominated the rear of the stage was brooding, near-monochromatic animated artwork; a different video piece for each song. The music was blissfully unassuming. It was technically proficient and ultimately brilliant, but their equanimity both during and between songs was outstanding.

The power in the music and the overall embrace of the dark melodies and moody compositions thrust forward into the crowd and allowed little room for waning attention or distraction of any sort. The stage show combined with the impeccable visuals trapped the eye. The band swapped instruments freely between and during songs demonstrating a well-rehearsed and clinical efficiency that matches the striking professionalism of their recorded music. And all the time the five-piece remained nonchalant and respectful to the audience, with great composure and modest banter between tracks. The entire experience was quite ethereal, and the reaction was electric. The crowd were silent during performances but they exploded with delight and admiration at the end of each piece.

Everything just fit into place nicely on the night. It was a fine example of how well a show can go when organised and executed by a unique crew of musicians. The sound, stage and atmosphere on the night were a credit to the venue and those involved.

Image courtesy of Halves' website, click for link

My personal reaction to this gig was to be completely filled with admiration for the musical intuitiveness and visual inventiveness of Halves. The gig did not escape me as one of the more moving musical nights that I have experienced. The overwhelming circumscription of sound and visual elements were chilling and exciting and, more powerful than anything else, inspiring. I was eager to write, record, play, animate, educate and create on leaving the gig, and the feeling that emerged that night has not left me yet.

Anna Calvi at Vicar Street, Dublin (Saturday November 19, 2011)

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Anna Calvi has exploded onto the UK music scene over the last few years. She has seen her work nominated for the Mercury Music Awards and the Brit Awards in 2011 and 2012. Her self-titled debut album featured collaboration from Brian Eno and Dave Okumo from The Invisible, and was produced by renowned producer Rob Ellis. She had previously worked with the recent folk revival’s golden boy Johnny Flynn, and has played support to major acts Interpol and Grinderman.

Anna Calvi Live at Vicar Street

Certainly on record Calvi’s early career has seen some bustling activity. Boasting a robust guitar sound and overwhelming vocal prowess, Calvi’s music has garnered a flurry of attention, being compared to acts as broad as Jeff Buckley, PJ Harvey and Ennio Morricone.

So far so good, really. So the live show seemed like something of a no-brainer. Calvi was guaranteed to impress it seemed.

The night started slowly. The venue packed to watch the support act, Halloween, Alaska, which was a little on the draining side. Poor sound did little to help the band from being drowned out by the murmer of an eager but unsure crowd. A lukewarm response was all the Minnesota band could muster from the skeptical onlookers, and the band left the stage without much fuss. Calvi appeared shortly after 10, and the room darkened to welcome the headline act.

Opening with the unaccompanied guitar piece Rider to the Sea and moving into No More Words as the tracks play on Calvi’s album, the performance started without much bang. There was a tired atmosphere, and an emptiness to the sound of the three-piece attempting to recreate the vast landscapes of sound found on the album.

As the tracks continued however, the influence from the bold and domineering Calvi began to take hold. Her petit meanderings on the microphone between songs helped to endear her to the audience. The band settled into the show and confidence grew as the crowd embraced the aural experience. Calvi’s vocals soared on powerful songs Desire and Blackout, and before long the atmosphere was overpowering. As the show continued the singer seemed to darken on stage and become attuned to the melody of her own voice, and excited by her meaty guitar licks and solos.

Calvi’s stage presence provided a remarkable show. She embraced her hard-crusted rock-chick persona and juxtaposed it with delicate and minimal musings between songs. Her movement was slick, and her playing and singing were both impeccable. She became a visual spectacle and seemed to grow as the gig progressed into a monumental force on-stage.

By end of the show the often cynical Vicar Street audience had turned from an almost stale reception to complete admiration. Calvi blasted out the tunes one after another with a roaring intensity. The three-piece were now constructing orchestral sounds from their minimalist arrangement. The Devil was the height of the performance, as the songstress’ vocals pierced the room and felt like they were lifting the crowd from their standing position into a sonorous hell-scape, deep and deliberate and completely overwhelming.

The show was a fine example of an artist winning an audience over, and underlined the significance of Anna Calvi as one of the UK’s top emerging music acts.

My personal reaction to the gig was to find myself somewhat starstruck. Calvi’s presence was thought-provoking. Her determined countenance was weighty and the values of the songs underlined the majesty of the performance. It is rare to see an act that is so overwhelming, but Anna Calvi brought an entire audience to life that night, and it was an unmissable show.

Sixteen Years for Fifteen Seconds: How long should you view a work of art?

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Look at the painting...

In 2010 James Elkins, Art Critic and Historian of the School of the Art Institute, Chicago, wrote a piece entitled How Long Does it Take To Look at a Painting? for The Huffington Post. In this piece the author describes an encounter with an elderly lady who he estimates, over decades of visits to the Art Institute of Chicago, spent at least 3,000 hours looking at Rembrandt’s painting Young Woman at an Open Half-Door (below).

Rembrandt - Young Woman at an Open Half-Door (1645)

Last year the online version of the tabloid The Daily Mail published a biting piece about the brief moments that viewers spend viewing contemporary art, leading with the jaundiced headline We all know what we like, and it’s not modern art!

The basic premise of the Daily Mail’s piece was to prove via observation that viewers spend an average of as little as 5 seconds looking at works by important contemporary artists such as Rachel Whiteread or Tracy Emin in the TATE Modern. Their conclusion was that viewers do not like looking at modern art.

Far be it from me to accuse The Daily Mail of canny journalism, but unfortunately there was an important point raised by the rag in this study. The point is not that viewers do not like looking at contemporary art, but that they do not spend much time looking at art.

The issue can be expanded into all visual art. The Guardian (phew!) quote a viewing time of the Mona Lisa of just around 15 seconds; just enough time to take a snapshot of La Gioconada. This meant that a work of art that took Leonardo Da Vinci sixteen years to complete merits less than a second of viewing per year of making. This brisk viewing time of art was further emphasised in an observational study, Spending Time On Art by Jason K. Smith and Lisa F. Smith (University of Otago, New Zealand), where the authors observed a 17 second median viewing time of art in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art.

Snapping the Mona Lisa - Image from The Guardian Online

I personally can confess to barreling through the crowds at The Louvre as an eager teenager looking to snap the Mona Lisa and virtually bypassing one of the world’s greatest collections of art on my way there. What I saw at the end was anticlimactic in my young eyes, having spent so many years looking at so many reproductions of this historically significant but seemingly unremarkable work of art. What I missed while glazing the corridors of one of the world’s great art institutions was monumental.

Why I rushed to see the Mona Lisa, and why the painting was so disappointing, I equate primarily to both education and understanding of art. I was raised to see the Mona Lisa as a driving force of all modern art, but I had little understanding of what the significance of the painting actually was – I was more starstruck with the idea of the Mona Lisa than with the actual work of art.

This expectation could be the same expectation that led to Rachel Whiteread’s sculpture at the TATE Modern being glossed over in The Daily Mail’s observation. Whiteread has enjoyed critical acclaim (and some lambasting) since her controversial sculpture House shot her to fame in 1993. This public installation led Whiteread to become the first ever female winner of the Turner Prize, and her method for making art has remained relatively constant since.

Rachel Whiteread - House (1993) - Image courtesy of damonart.com

The artist casts objects (including in her repertoire a Victorian house as mentioned above, library bookshelves and a controversial holocaust monument), then creates “negative sculptures” of these objects to show a sealed-off and finalised view of something which once had human engagement. The resulting works of art give a fascinating view of objects in a way that they are not normally seen, like turning real-life inside out and presenting a caulked perspective that can be eerie and unwelcoming. The weight of concept behind Whiteread’s methods is enormous, but the actual finished product can look somewhat empty to the uninformed viewer without closer inspection.

Whether Whiteread’s work will inspire a frenzy of happy snappers in a prodigious art institution in 500 years time is something we will never know. We do know, however that 5 or 15 seconds is a remarkably small amount of time to view a work of art of any description. I personally have spent sixteen seconds watching a baby panda sneeze on YouTube. But I cannot claim to have spent more than fifteen seconds looking at the Mona Lisa.

In 1970 author Alvin Toffler wrote a sociological study, Future Shock. In this book, Toffler analyses the effects of a “speeding up” of society to the point where transience will become second nature. Since its publication, much of Toffler’s percipient visions have become social mainstays. Contemporary western society can be said to exist in a period where transience rules supreme; ephemeral is the name of the game, and from a young age we are now spoon-fed instant access to a world of information through modern media and technology that leave little time for appreciation and analysis.

Although this has led to some wonderful developments, the problem with this is that art takes time and understanding to read properly. In the Huffington Post article referenced at the start of this piece James Elkins observed that if he had a full-time job of looking at art then he would have spent over two working weeks to learn to see one Mondrian painting. Art takes time and education to understand fully, and time is the key factor. We are all able to see the artistic product in front of us, but it is only through taking time looking that we can truly see the art.

Through education we can learn the rest.

The picture that you saw at the beginning of this post shows a scene of art fans viewing Manet’s famous and extremely influential le déjeuner sur l’herbe (The Luncheon on the Grass). Manet’s painting is often cited as the first modern painting, completed in 1863 and currently exhibited at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

If you have not already spotted it, the image that you see above is a watercolour painting of the Manet painting being exhibited. It is called Untitled (Manet), by Canadian artist Tim Gardner [image courtesy of 303 gallery]. Garder’s method is to take photographs and make photo-realist paintings of scenes. His concept, as cited in modern painting bible Vitamin P, is partly a criticism of modern painting, designed to show that photography has made painting somewhat obsolete. His use of the supposed “first” modern painting in a gallery as the subject of this painting underlines the theme of modern painting as central in his work.

Le d’éjeuner sur l’herbe took two years to complete. The viewers in Gardner’s painting will be looking at it as long as Untitled (Manet) exists.

The moral of this story: The more you look, the more you see.

To define “Time” in ten words or less

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We can all define time. We all understand what it is and how it works, right? The challenge: to define time in ten words or less.

The Oxford English Dictionary summarise time pretty well:

time

Pronunciation: /tʌɪm/ noun 1 [mass noun] the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole

 

That’s exactly what I would have said.

The concept is straightforward for anyone who has existed in it. “The indefinite continued progress of existence”, as soon as you get past trying to understand “indefinite”. The continued progress of existence is something we have all related to and seen. But “indefinite” like “infinite” is a concept that we can’t see or experience, as nothing that exists within our own individual line of vision is not definite. Except for time.

OK, but the “past, present and future” are straightforward to understand as long as you live in a world where time exists. Our memories and the memories of others that are recounted to us through historical account are the “past”. So “past” is simple. As long as you don’t think back further than history records, to the Big Bang, when time as we understand it began. But having a finite point in the past means that time is not indefinite, at least in one direction. Still, there is nothing to say that time did not exist previous to the Big Bang, but there are still questions unanswered.

The present exists though. We are all sure of that. You are reading this post in the present. Or, rather, the word you are reading as you are reading it is being read in the present. Because the parts that you have already read have fallen into the past, and the part that you will read if you are polite enough to sustain the rest of this post is the future. So the present exists between the past and the future. For a moment, as in the idea of “now”. but “now” has already passed by the time that you realise it is “now”. And apparently we experience everything 80 milliseconds after it has happened due to the delay in signals getting to our brains, so what you are actually experiencing is slightly in the past, and what is happening now has not happened for you yet…

OK, we’ll jump to the future. No problem. The things that will happen. The future certainly exists. We know that time will continue on to an indefinite point. Unless it stops. Which we would never know about, because it would happen in the future. Or, rather, it would happen in the present, at a moment, but that moment exists in the future.

This is getting polluted. Let’s try another definition; one of something more rational than language. How about science:

“Absolute, true, and mathematical time, in and of itself and of its own nature, without reference to anything external, flows uniformly and by another name is called duration. Relative, apparent, and common time is any sensible and external measure (precise or imprecise) of duration by means of motion; such a measure – for example, an hour, a day, a month, a year – is commonly used instead of true time.”

Sir Isaac Newton, Philosophae Naturalis Principia Mathematica

Newton had an understanding of absolution, and time to Newton was something which existed in an almost physical way. Newton divided time into two separate forms – one of absolution, i.e. “Absolute Time”, the second of relativity, relating to the individual, i.e. “Relative Time”

Absolute Time is something that exists without human perception. This moves perpetually through the universe. It exists and always will exist. It travels and passes, and everything that has happened has happened, and everything that is going to happen is going to happen. To Newton Absolute Time could not be perceived, but it could be inferred through mathematics. For example, the movement of moons around planets show the passing of time, because their movement suggests something calculable has changed and the change in position could not exist without time. So Absolute Time is the constant existence of movement of anything in the universe, but it is imperceptible. Got that?

Relative Time, in contrast, is time that the individual can experience. We know that time has passed by our own perception of things that have happened, and by experiencing the very short-lived present. But relative time is unique to the individual who experiences it. A good metaphor recounted on BBC’s superb radio show In Our Time With Melvyn Bragg. In an episode entitled The Physics of Time speaker and theoretical physicist Jim Al-Khalili suggests that for two football fans at a match cheering on a their winning and losing side respectively, time moves much faster for the losing fan who is hoping for a goal, where time moves slowly for the winning fan who is nervous about conceding one.

So Absolute Time just exists, and we have to believe it despite never experiencing it. And relative time certainly exists but it is different for each one of us. And this was accepted until Einstein threw a spanner in the works in the 1920s and denied that Absolute Time was a unique entity from space, showing that space and time existed and reacted together.

And space and time combined brings me to philosophy for definition number 3:

“Time is not an empirical concept that is somehow drawn from experience. For simultaneity or succession would not themselves come into perception if the representation of time did not ground them a priori. Only under its presuppositions can one represent that several things exist at one and the same time or at different times.”

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

Now we’re getting somewhere. Aren’t we?

OK, Time is not an empirical concept, i.e. time is not relative, or concerned with individual observation. Rather, time is a theoretical thing which exists absolutely. For Kant nothing could exist if time didn’t exist, so we are back to something closer to Newton’s Absolute Time, which we remember Einstein equated to be relational to space. To Kant time is a priori, which in philosophy is a type of dual-knowledge or argument, concerned with space. Kant like Einstein saw time as fully relational to space, and argued that both are elements that we use to structure our experience.

That is to say our own individual experience.

Which is relative depending on whether your team is winning or losing.

And which changes depending on your views of history. And which can be distorted by your predictions of the future. Which is something that has not existed yet, while the present exists and the past once existed but only for a moment and that fleeting moment burned out as soon as the present subsided and a new future was entered into, and became the present, to soon become the past.

Right?

And at this point I have only delved into more populist theories of time. We’ve still got simultaneity and presentism, endurantism and perdurantism, chronology and spacetime, history and eternity and Antiphon the Sophist to cover. I’ll leave that for another post.

We’ll stick with the straightforward definitions we have at hand. Define the three concepts above in ten or fewer words. No problem. Let’s take a little from all three and create a definition:

“Time: A priori of progress of existence without reference to anything.”

Oxford English Dictionary, Sir Isaac Newton and Immanuel Kant

Sound about right? Here’s a treat for taking the time to read this:

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