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« We're getting blamed for everything | Main | God hates Porsches »
Temporal perspective
Category: Weirdness
Posted on: April 14, 2008 2:30 PM, by PZ Myers
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Comments
Posted by: idahogie | April 14, 2008 2:41 PM
Gonna have to show the kids this one tonight.
Posted by: Jit | April 14, 2008 2:45 PM
Reminds me of that episode of Star Trek where they hear the whining of a mosquito that turns out to be speeded-up aliens.
Posted by: Vic | April 14, 2008 2:46 PM
That was neat.
Posted by: Forrest Prince | April 14, 2008 2:55 PM
Took me a few minutes into the film before I started to get it, but after that I really started to enjoy it. Time, and the existance of man, from the perspective of a sentient rock. Pretty cool. Glad it had subtitles, too. They helped.
Well, gotta go. Time to scrape some lichen off my chin.
Posted by: Lorne | April 14, 2008 3:02 PM
Absolutely brilliant
Posted by: Holbach | April 14, 2008 3:03 PM
Clever in the passage of time as witnessed by rocks!
Posted by: Evan | April 14, 2008 3:04 PM
Viel toll!
Posted by: Somite | April 14, 2008 3:05 PM
Anyone remembers the Heeche? Robert L. Forward wrote a similar story in reverse. Beings on the surface of a neutron star that moved much faster than us. Dragon's Egg.
Posted by: Biggs | April 14, 2008 3:10 PM
I remember seeing this a long time ago as part of Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt's "The Animation Show." It was one of the better shorts included.
Posted by: Will | April 14, 2008 3:26 PM
I saw it in the animation show, too. And it for sure was one of the better shorts. I love how the wheel just deteriorates in his hands and he grabs another rock to replace it when he wants to show it to his fat friend. haha.
Posted by: schmeer | April 14, 2008 3:38 PM
Stimmt!Posted by: lolife | April 14, 2008 3:57 PM
8 minutes? Who has 8 minutes?
Posted by: Niobe | April 14, 2008 3:58 PM
@#2: Or the one where voyager stuck in the orbit of a quickly developing planet (3 days in voyager was like 3k on the planet) where they first became a godlike entity but as society developed they were able to see them in telescopes and some people still thought them deities.
Strangely appropriate.
Posted by: Charlie Allery | April 14, 2008 4:10 PM
@#13 Blink of an Eye
vs
@#2 Wink of an Eye
coz, y'know, why make up a new title when you can recycle the old one. :)
Excellent film. Well worth the watch.
Posted by: Kraken | April 14, 2008 4:17 PM
Wow. Truly amazing. Best short I've ever seen.
Posted by: Helioprogenus | April 14, 2008 4:20 PM
That was great, as mentioned before, it took a bit to understand what was happening, but once you get into it, it's quite an interesting perspective. Now the question is, what could cause such an advancing development to stop like it did? I'm guessing it's a bunch of creationists taking control of science, and silencing empirical thinking.
Posted by: Gregory Kusnick | April 14, 2008 4:23 PM
Re #8: The Heechee were Fred Pohl's invention in Gateway. Forward's neutron-star critters were called Cheela.
Posted by: JM Inc. | April 14, 2008 4:30 PM
Wonderful! It reminds me of great Greg Egan novels such as Permutation City, Diaspora, and Schild's Ladder where the perceptions of the passage of time of characters differ from normal - such as in Diaspora when the two artificial intelligences born and raised in supercomputers suddenly inhabit android bodies, and one amuses itself by taunting the other about how many months are passing for their friends and relatives while they waste time plodding around the surface of Earth meeting the fleshers.
Posted by: Quentin Long | April 14, 2008 4:34 PM
quoth Somite:
Beggin' yer pardon, but the accelerated neutron-star-inhabiting critters are actually called "Cheela"; on the plus side, you're absolutely right about them being in Robert Forward's novel DRAGON'S EGG (not to mention the sequel, STARQUAKE). "Heechee" is the name of some critters invented by Frederick Pohl, who first appeared in Pohl's novel GATEWAY. Given the similarity between the two names, your error was a venial sin at worst...
Posted by: Pandora | April 14, 2008 5:10 PM
"Gridnack!"
Posted by: Stephen R. | April 14, 2008 5:16 PM
Ganz toll!
This was very interesting. Though, anyone else couldn't stand how when the billboard fell apart, it's movement was all weird from the perspective of the rocks? It kinda irked me.
Posted by: revulo | April 14, 2008 5:17 PM
Now that was really interesting!! Beautifully done. It really DOES put everything into perspective...thanks for posting it. I hadn't heard of it before.
Posted by: Forrest Prince | April 14, 2008 5:29 PM
lolife at #12: Who's got eight minutes? Me. Twice that much, in fact (helps to be stuck at home on disability). Just watched it a second time. Even better.
Posted by: Alex Besogonov | April 14, 2008 5:51 PM
Weird coincidence: I was reading "Starquake" by R. Forward few minutes ago.
That must be a sign from Dog!
Posted by: Frederik Rosenkjær | April 14, 2008 6:37 PM
Brilliant.
But whoever made this must be under the impression that Earth is really old...
Posted by: dogheaven | April 14, 2008 6:39 PM
Looks like a bright future - for rocks that is. I really enjoyed this.
Posted by: Rob | April 14, 2008 6:39 PM
"Great Slow Kings" by the late (and still much lamented) Roger Zelazny. Dinosaurs, not rocks; brilliant.
Posted by: joint pounder | April 14, 2008 9:38 PM
#16: The brief flash of light in the rocks' faces at the moment the advance stops -- I'm guessing it's the nuclear Armageddon.
Posted by: BobbyEarle | April 14, 2008 9:54 PM
joint pounder...
That was my take on that as well. Ganz toll, ganz gut!
Posted by: Gene | April 14, 2008 10:03 PM
You know the creationists are going to construe this as evidence that evolutionary theory actually does say we evolved from rocks.
Posted by: wazza | April 14, 2008 10:27 PM
You're not supposed to call them rocks. This is free advice what I am giving you free gratis because you is an evolutionist and free-thinker like me.
Posted by: pcarini | April 14, 2008 10:40 PM
From the same year's The Animation Show: Billy's Balloon. Same event, different artist, well twisted.
Posted by: rich (richmanwisco) | April 14, 2008 10:41 PM
Brilliant work. But I couldn't help pick one nit: did anybody notice any erosion of the rocks?
Posted by: wazza | April 14, 2008 10:49 PM
Rich,the rocks appeared to be basaltic, or possibly a harder sandstone such as Greywacke. In the time-frame we're looking at, about ten to fifteen thousand years, those rocks might show no appreciable signs of decay, in the environment shown.
Posted by: Betz | April 14, 2008 11:08 PM
Und so. I'd think this would have to rank pretty high among the "Most German" posts. Ganz güt!
Posted by: Bride of Shrek | April 15, 2008 1:42 AM
Hey Rich
Don't nitpick - its not Gneiss! Boom boom
Posted by: Gareth | April 15, 2008 4:17 AM
I enjoyed that. It reminded me of one of the Terry Pratchett books where the trees are having a meeting.
Posted by: wazza | April 15, 2008 4:28 AM
Gareth, did you obliquely refer to Reaper Man just to be cool?
Because real Pratchett fans know the titles of the books they're quoting
Posted by: Peter Ashby | April 15, 2008 5:24 AM
I just loved when the little one throws the pine cone and it 'explodes' into a tree. After all an explosion is just something burning very quickly. Film an ordinary fire and fast forward it, imagine all those sparks together. That is what they were getting across. On the time frame of the rocks, a pine cone IS a hand grenade. Wonderful.
Posted by: chuckgoecke | April 15, 2008 8:50 AM
I was thinking about what "primitive" cultures thought of the ages of rocks. They must have noticed that rocks don't change much, that pictures scrapped or carved into them don't change within memory or lifetimes. This is probably why their leaders used rocks to make monuments, even though the cost would be much higher. Rocks are nearly timeless. I'm sure almost all ancients peoples felt or knew that rocks are very very old, but probably had not idea how old, just much older than man. Then this sect in the middle east came along, and apparently lost all ideas of the ages of the rocks, and started equating them with the ages of humans. They concocted at "great flood" to 'splain the wildly eroded rock formations. Once you've started a big lie, you have to build on it, (Lucie, 'splain something to me.....) And finally, you get fifties sitcoms.
Posted by: Peter Ashby | April 15, 2008 11:00 AM
Around Avebury in Wiltshire, England (north of Stonehenge, stone circle encloses part of the village) there is a whole ceremonial landscape and at one corner of it (on the hill above Silbury Hill and West Kennett longbarrow) is Woodhenge. Where they found post holes in the chalk for concentric rings of wooden posts. They know about it because, the chalk lying close to the surface in that part of the Downs they had to cut into the rock to put the posts in and and that left the signature. Do it in a different substrate and there may be no preservation.
Mind you there is another wooden henge just off the present coast of Norfolk iirc. It is only intermittently visible being generally buried in the sand/silt and hence preserved.
So they did build in wood as well as stone.
Posted by: Meg | April 15, 2008 12:03 PM
Very cool. But in rock-time, one couldn't actually throw a pinecone...
Posted by: isabelita | April 15, 2008 1:38 PM
I liked that! There's a kids' novel called "The Nargun and the Stars" by an Australian writer, Patricia Wrightson, which has a very good rock protagonist. Not sure if it's based on Aboriginal mythology, but it's an excellent read, even for adults.
Posted by: Peter Ashby | April 15, 2008 1:42 PM
Oh I don't know, things can get thrown some distances when the rocks slide. The arm goes up at glacial speed, yes. Doesn't mean it has to come down that fast....
Posted by: Steven Sullivan | April 15, 2008 1:55 PM
This reminds me of another cute stop-motion short, from years ago -- the early 70's maybe? It starts with a pastoral scene, eventually some hippies with flowers in their hair come in and start singing lute songs, which gets louder and louder and eventually morphs into acid rock, which somehow causes the nearby mountain to erupt in a volcano which covers them all in lava...which then sprouts trees and returns the land to a natural state.
It seemed pretty hilariously dated the last time I saw it (some time in the late 80s)
Posted by: Dennis | April 15, 2008 1:55 PM
When the city wall stopped right in front of them, did anyone else get a flash of "The City and The Stars"?
Posted by: AJ Hawks | April 22, 2008 5:13 PM
This is eerie. I have a concept for a video with an almost identical premise. It's just amazing that someone half way around the world had the same idea.
I really am not a self promoter (there are no ads on my blog, no revenue, and I don't care about views), but I wrote up an outline of how my video would have gone, if anyone's interested:
http://ajhawks.blogspot.com/2008/02/speed-of-time.html
("Temporal Perspective" is a way better title than mine, damn)
Posted by: HotPlasma | May 31, 2008 3:17 PM
A pleasure to watch. Definitely worth sharing. I particularly liked the touch of that detailed petrified tree next to the 2 rocks. To think it stood there with them until it was physically removed.
Kind of humbling though to be reminded that nature will survive all our modern structures. :)