A while ago I had a badge made, it was a very simple idea but for myself at the time it represented something fundamental. Time appears to flow from the known past, to the present and onwards to an unknown future. But not all cultures have seen time in this way.
For instance, the indigenous Māori concept of time known as wā, is non-linear. Their experience of time is of a continuous unfolding whereby the living exist alongside their ancestors, making history and the present contiguous. This has been described as spiralling time, which is in constant, expansive motion. Whilst in the Amazon rainforest, the Pirahã tribe live with an unbroken sense of the immediate present. Their language lacks a past tense entirely and they do not have a sense of history or future-past constructs. For them, time is not a sequence of past, present, future, but an immediate condition of things as they are.
In quantum physics the past, present, and future also exist at the same time. The block universe theory, as supported by Einstein's theory of relativity, describes a four-dimensional block, whereby space and time combine into the single four-dimensional structure of spacetime. The feeling of time moving is just how humans experience it; yesterday, today and tomorrow are all equally real, much like different locations exist even if you cannot see them.
The Block Universe
There is also a cyclical view of time. Cyclical patterns of change are often embedded into mythologies, especially because we live on a planet that revolves, thus setting up an idea of constant return. Day follows night, autumn follows summer, spring follows winter. However, some cultures have much longer or more cosmic ideas of time than others, such as the Taoist idea of "the blue sea becomes mulberry fields".
In the ancient Taoist text 'Shenxian Zhuan', compiled by the Eastern Jin dynasty scholar Ge Hong in the 4th century, a story is told by the immortals that illustrates how immense the passage of time can be.
When the immortal Wang Fangping asks another immortal, Magu to visit, she notes that since they last met, the celestial eastern sea has already turned into mulberry fields. In the story Magu explains that she looked down and saw that the sea had dried up and transformed into farmland and she suspects it will soon turn back into an ocean again. This idea of vast cyclical change is used to describe massive, sweeping and irreversible transformations that happen over far longer spans of time than human lives.
I also had to think about colour. The combination of blue, green and purple is an analogous colour scheme, i. e. the colours are adjacent to each other within a colour wheel. The tonality of each colour is adjusted so that each value is similar, a series of choices which I hoped would create a calm, harmonious feeling.
I was at the same time aware of colour symbology, but I did not try to fix anything, except to be cognisant of blue in my mind standing for calm, peace and spirituality, green for nature, growth, and renewal and purple for wisdom, and creativity, but I did not want to label these, as each culture has its own colour symbology.
The spiral form is one often used to represent spiritual transformation; it represents a cycling closer to higher consciousness over time, as well as mimicking natural patterns found in galaxies, shells, whirlwinds, and whirlpools.
My badge is small, my attempt in as compact a form as possible, to form a doorway into thinking about these things. I still have some left and give them away as a reminder that art does not have to be massive or grand in order to be effective. If you would like one e mail me on garry.barker@leeds-art.ac.uk
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