Tag Archives: time travel

The Future Looks Different: Art Breaking the Space-Time Continuum

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WormholeConnection.HR-Stamenov

What can contemporary art do? We talked about modern art and design that traveled to space in spaceships (not to mention the whole discussion the historical avant-garde was having about creating the fourth dimension in their works at the time). Today in Sweden/Finland, artist HR-Stamenov created a wormhole: that is, he exploited the Einstein-Rosen bridge to take a shortcut through time and space as we experience it:

On March 12, a strange phenomenon will connect two cities located on the two opposite sides of the Gulf of Bothnia in the Baltic Sea: Vaasa in Finland and Umeå in Sweden.

A transport corridor, provoked by the opening of a Wormhole, also known as an Einstein–Rosen bridge, which is a hypothetical topological feature of space-time, will create a ‘shortcut’ between the two cities. The phenomenon will allow a Train to appear inside a building in Vaasa, then 3 minutes later in Umeå, then back in Vaasa after 3 min. and after 3 min. again in Umeå…CONT HERE

Of course, HR-Stamenov is actually illustrating theories of time travels and space distortions by means of lights, that is, through  art rather than science.  But if Constructivist spaceships anticipated real ones, I wonder what this portal looks like. 

I Want a Time Machine

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Time Machine XLIX, Jason Brammer

WIKIPEDIA: Although time travel has been a common plot device in fiction since the 19th century, and one-way travel into the future is arguably possible given the phenomenon of time dilation based on velocity in the theory of special relativity (exemplified by the twin paradox), as well as gravitational time dilation in the theory of general relativity, it is currently unknown whether the laws of physics would allow backwards time travel.

Time Machine Model

Last night I watched the classic 1960 film The Time Machine, where a Victorian Englishman travels far into the future based on the novel by H.G. Wells. Travelling into the future is a concept suggested in many ancient myths and folk tales, often with the person returning to find his family old or gone. Travelling into the future is also possible according to our law of physics–for example, if I were to ride a beam of light to the sun and back, I would arrive in the future. 

Time Machine XXIX, Jason Brammer

Travelling to the past is a different beast. It is not known whether the laws of physics would allow it, and it has only occurred in literature relatively recently in the 18th and 19th century. Time travel to the future doesn’t seem to be in vogue in the popular imagination–or perhaps just my imagination. If anything, I assume time travel is to the past when I think of it, and Jason Brammer’s time machines certainly look like they would travel to the past (although the artist’s website doesn’t make any claims as to whether the pieces work). Which way would you go?


(However I would also be overjoyed to have a plain and simple travel machine, per below.)