“Entropy” (Hyperfuture series)
I like to imagine the transportation to the afterlife as a one-way train that runs on time, with designated stops and doors that only open when your time has come. Imagine the conductor calling your name instead of the station where you hop off. I think it’s the most straightforward metaphor: a train is set on a track and time, as we experience it, is linear. You can make the case that time is cyclical or time doesn’t even exist in the same way that “here” and “now” are just an invention of language as a point marker, and doesn’t actually pertain to one specific thing. But one reality at a time, one where time is linear, is enough to worry about. You and I have no say on whether we want to be on the train. All we know is that we found ourselves there. We are at the mercy of time. But how can time be an illusion if death is very real?
Today at the subway, I found the body of a tiny cat or puppy on the tracks. I can’t tell what it is because its head had been dismembered from its body with its neck still red with dried blood. I wonder how it got there. Within a few moments, someone could have intervened, stopped the train, saved the animal, but it all happened too fast. And we are somehow supposed to accept that this is just a part of life.
By some twist of fate, or is it cruel chance, the time train marches on and there’s no way to derail it. And just as a train cannot go off course, time waits for no one. Do we blame fate or chance? Or do we resign ourselves from the need to tell ourselves that everything, even unnecessary suffering, happens for a reason, and accept the absurdity?
Regardless of what physics would tell you, how can time be an illusion of death is very real?
About the series:
“Hyperfuture” is a philosophical dive into what physics tells us about time. Hyperfuture is defined as “a space-time block, distinct from ours, situated in an additional temporal dimension: hypertime”. Taking from the quote, “to be conscious at all is to be conscious of time”, it explores the theme of clairvoyance, free will, chronoception, and time dilation in relation to how we create meaning of our ephemeral existence on earth. The series features works in realism, referencing actual scenes from life, and surrealism and Suggestivism to depict the subconscious to explore whether time — a construct — works independently of consciousness. One symbol will be highlighted: the hypercube or tesseract which shows the fourth dimension which is time.
