‘Tralfamadorian time’ paper at ‘Time, Transcendence, Performance’ conference, Monash University, Melbourne
Andrew Newman is presenting his paper ‘Tralfamadorian time: digital rhythm and anxiety’ at Time, Transcendence, Performance conference at Monash University in Melbourne. The conference runs from October 1 until October 3. Newman will be presenting his paper at the ‘Narrative Multiplicities’ session alongside Daniel Vuillermin from the Biography Institute at the Australian National University, and Ruth Skilbeck from the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at the University of Technology Sydney. The session will be chaired by Felix Nobis and begins at 3.30pm on Thursday October 1.
“All moments, past, present and future have always existed. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever.” – Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5
Non-linear time is stretched across our computer screens like the Rocky Mountains. With the advent of hard-drive based video recording, consumers and home video enthusiasts are no longer required to fast forward or rewind, where they wait for the time to pass in order to reach their remembered moments. I propose that the home video enthusiast’s cutting up of time in the digital video editing suite has changed their experience and visual perception of time. On the computer screen we can jump across time just like the Tralfamadorians, yet back in the real world we are left waiting, waiting for the moment to pass. Our body rebels, it is stuck in beads-on-a-string time, but it yearns for the freedom of Tralfamordian time, so the body succumbs to a glitchy shake, an anxiety caused by the digital rhythm.