In the mid/late 1990’s, MTV (back when it made some effort to show actual music videos) had a late-night show called “Amp” which showed a lot of oddball videos, electronica, mostly. One that always weirded me right the hell out was the video “The Box” by Orbital, starring a pre-fame Tilda Swinton.
[youtube q25Zx6B5HJA]
It’s simple enough in concept… an oddly dressed woman walks through (I think) London and looks at stuff. But she walked *really* slowly; even with the film sped way up, so that people are basically just blurs, she’s still barely creeping through the scenery. I don’t know what the “message” was supposed to be (or if there even was supposed to be one), but I figured she either represents a spirit, an alien or a crazy person trying to make sense of things and failing utterly, not least because the time rates are all off. For sci-fi authors, please note: this may well be the case with aliens. They may live a thousand times faster than us or a thousand times slower… or a million, or a billion. In those cases, interactions are likely to be damn near meaningless. “Dragon’s Egg” by RobertForward dealt with such an issue; what was for the humans involved a matter of days was the rise and fall of entire civilizations from non-technological barbarism to starflight for another species.
What might be more interesting is a species offset from human timescales by a factor of, say, two. Far enough off to be annoying for both sides; close enough for meaningful interaction.
———–
For whatever reason, Monsters Exist, and her reaction to it, always gave me a serious case of the uncomfortables. The whole video drips with “alienation.”
9 Responses to “Flashback: Orbitals “The Box””
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Normally, in science fiction, the advanced species operates at a faster speed than the less advanced. Perhaps always, I can’t think of a counter example off the top of my head.
Now, I have friends from the North East who tend to dismiss folks from the South because they’re “slow”. They are of course confusing words per minute with complexity of content.
I’ve known a number of Southerners who spoke a mile a minute. And often, while heavily word-laden, such speech was content-free. And I’ve seena number of *really* North-Easterners (from Maine and such) who spoke at a glacial pace. I suspect by “North East” you might mean “New York/Boston/Joisie megametroplex.”
> in science fiction, the advanced species operates at a faster speed than the less advanced
Not the case (initially) in “Dragon’s Egg” by Forward. The slowpokes show up with the advanced tech; the speedsters start off not quite yet having grasped the full potential of the pointed stick, IIRC. By the end, the situation has reversed.
a sarcastic alternate is Roger Zelazny’s “The Great Slow Kings”
And don’t forget Charles Sheffield’s BETWEEN THE STROKES OF NIGHT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Between_the_Strokes_of_Night
I can identify with the video. Just in my own town alone, I know what it feels like to be alien. Location’s not important.
But when I left home for serivce, I clearly remember my little town being a part of the US. Since coming back, I realize it’s not the same place I left. Everyone’s speaking another language and even the license plates are different.
Either my town was annexed to a certain country to the south of us, or I walked into an alternate universe the minute I stepped off the Freedom Bird.
That being said, the sensation I’ve had these last few years of civilian life is almost like that of being an alien stuck on a strange world.
The Brits like to talk about being alienated. Almost as much a goth college kids majoring in a “liberal art.” To me, it’s just fairly normal stuff: an attempt to make others feel as disconnected as the artist felt when he conceived the project.
Wasn’t this done long ago on Star Trek?
Yeah, but they got the math wrong. Spock got himself sped up; but the ratio was such that everything he did while so sped up would have lasted in the “regular world” maybe a few seconds. But IIRC, Kirk & Co. spent several hours mucking about at regular speed.
And then there was “Vaster than Empires and More Slow”