Time Travel Art: Fantastic Video
May 22, 2012 4 Comments
It takes a lot for art to excite me. But when I stumble upon a time-travel-themed YouTube video inspired by Dr. Who and Edward Gorey… I feel the urge to share it with everyone. Yes, it’s every bit as cool as it sounds. The video is by ‘MaryDoodles’, who produces time-lapse videos of herself painting – but this time she found a way to work time-travel into the delivery as well as the content. You’ll just have to watch it:
I found myself hitting ‘replay’ over and over, figuring out how the hell she did it, spotting new things I’d missed (did you see all the things tying the scenes together? How about the TARDIS?), and trying to piece the plot together. Alas, she’s not giving hints about the story she intended:
The discussions on Youtube are quite fun to watch as people try and piece together the order of events and what happened. I’ve decided to hold my tongue on this matter. There is an intentional order to the story but the fact that other people are seeing different orders of events, character relations and catalysts I figured I’d just leave my opinions out of it. It’s almost like a personality test when you hear someone’s take on the video. There are those that take the “glass is half empty” approach while others say the “glass is half full”. Happy ending? Tragic ending?”
I’m still making up my mind. Curiosity is a wonderful emotion, and I think the ambiguity is actually a positive factor.
Stereotypical koans take the ambiguity too far – “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” is just a broadside assault on semantics – but this is pleasantly confusing to me, like a puzzle.
Have you played Braid? It’s a game where time travel is part of the game mechanics and is used to create another baffling multiply interpretable story. The puzzles are also pretty challenging. I bet you’d like it.
Seconding the Braid recommendation. A similar feel to this, but more intense. (I found myself starting at the screen in shock several times, plus the pleasure of solving puzzles is greater than the pleasure of entertaining them).
It is good to see that this blog is not yet abandoned by its authors.
However, if future posts as such will take the form of video recommendations, as might be found on any reddit-style aggregator, at least one of its *readers* will abandon it.
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