Thank you all for being here, here in Balton, in the Netherlands.
Okay, I will introduce Rashida Phillips, she's an artist, she's a lawyer, focused on the
idea of time and how time is becoming so dominant.
Sounds as causes and events.
What is sound?
Is sound matter?
Is sound a quantum event?
We know that it can be manipulated, and that sonic energy, if concentrated high enough,
can manipulate matter.
Sound is commonly defined as transmitted through the air or another medium.
But does that make sound matter, by definition, a physical entity or object?
The science of sound tells us that sound needs a medium to propagate, namely via waves
or sound waves.
But even if sound waves are matter, does that mean that sound equals matter?
A closer look may show us that waves are merely the vehicle on which sound and light ride,
but not the things themselves.
Do we ever see light moving, or is it always here, as soon as we blink?
The scientific institution's development coincided with the emergence of the transatlantic
enslavement system, and then used as a justification for subjugation.
Its development was impacted significantly by the Roman Inquisitions.
The Inquisitions condemned Galileo for teaching that the Earth moved.
The cart delayed publishing, and tweaked his theories on heliocentrism due to the Inquisition's
belief in the Earth as the center of the universe.
Newton conducted his experiments in an effort to prove the cart wrong, and many of his theories
have failed to stand the test of time, whose own scientific history is convoluted in the
realm of thermodynamics and relativity.
Science is the ultimate political body.
The mind-body split, the dualism that persists into present times to reason-wide classical
physics and quantum physics seemingly contradict, blinded by its own so-called enlightenment
and thusly setting light and dark as opposites, eternally at odds inside of the cascading
chaotic universe.
Science is really the resulting end of a negotiation.
The laws and principles we hold to be commonly true about the world and the universe were
all shaped by the hands of a privileged few, and because we know science fiction to be
social commentary on the de-evolution of society through parable, it is easy to see where the
lines split between the science of the haves and the have-nots, and thusly where the lines
split between traditional and DIY sci-fi.
People on the edges, the intersections, the margins of society can no longer rectify our
lack of representation and our lack of survival and traditional science fiction worlds and
no longer computes for our program of living.
We are here, we are here, and we are many, and we are political.
We are political because skin color is political.
We are political because body parts are political.
We are political because who you like to fuck is political, because breathing clean air
and drinking clean water is political, and in order to disavow the political, to challenge
the political, to break down the political, you must first understand how it already has
you confined and then proceed to unravel it from the inside, out of the dust of the crumbling
institution of science divorced from imagination, what you all call science fiction, conscience
and speculative possibility in the form of black-ponged futurism, a new science for a new
world of our own shaping, and here with science left in our care, there is no difference between
the experimental and the theoretical, here with science left in our care, the thermodynamic
arrow of time shoots out into all possible directions, here we are science's proposal
to imagination for a happy lifelong union, we are time equal space.
Predictive coding, hashtag pathophysics, hashtag speculative science, hashtag experimental
metaphysics.
To perceive the world is to anticipate it, automatic memory, brain waves or knowledge
about the world and probabilities of one state of events following another to generate a
prediction, see Darwinism.
What we perceive is determined by what we know and vice versa, feedback, boop, action
exist to validate our predictions but get this, there is no year, there is no history,
there is no past, there are only stories, everything that we think we know is all amine,
we can never get at the source, everything is a building metaphor and we define phenomena
by metaphor because essence is best expressed in terms that we can observe and articulate
and yet we can never get at a thing, what it is, in and of itself, its source outside
of its own existence and on its own terms without reference to some other thing, some
thing outside the thing itself to give it contrast and definition against the backdrop
of black nothingness of mystery contained by the essence of everything unknown.
We are things, we are only things against backdrops, against backgrounds, against seas
of other things, giving that thing in focus its contrast and its difference.
But even these words abstract the notion, as all things are extracted and far removed,
we build more metaphors into language over top of the old ones and metaphors become like
stones or like means, self perpetuating, self referencing, self replenishing its origin
and memory and the creation of language is literally hyperbole, hyper equals beyond,
balo equals to throw and metaphor, meta equals over and across, theran equals to carry or
to bear, we take practical action words and build metaphor on top of metaphor, trading
things in and out, branching off until the metaphor becomes the thing itself.
And language builds us up, it builds up the world in images, it makes things interchangeable
with actions and it allows action to hide behind language.
You are activating the energy of the act, inventing the word without actually carrying
out the physical action, language sets us up for phantom actions which is why the question
of what means more, action or words is root, because words are actions, they are actions
taken literally, once prepared by their own etymology and this is why word magic is a
short cut to reality alteration.
Time, temperature, direction, balance, pain, motion.
We are born into institutions.
Our very first breath and vision of the world outside the space time of the womb is taken
between the four walls of an institution.
Like newborns to an umbilical cord, we remain tethered to institutions for all of our lives,
depending upon them for sustenance, protection, health and welfare.
These institutions built on stolen land are the great European father's stone playgrounds,
testaments of patriarchy and within these stone playgrounds they have created the space
time that we all abide by.
The timeline brought to you by Einstein, Newton, Galileo and other long dead Europeans contradicting
our experience reality and the wisdom of the ancients.
We hold their truths to be self-evident.
The system plays to the audience's perceptions, but truthfully 9.5 out of 10 scientists anonymously
surveyed would admit that as science progresses it does not discover any ultimate truths.
It simply finds better approximations.
In memetic and genetic and quantum and urban Darwinism, certain structures and myths went
out over others and the eternal game played inside the arena of this particular space
time.
And after effect of the electromagnetic crisscross path created when the atom was split and bifurcated
from his better half and collapsed into the space time of this common reality.
It split the brain into two halves too, left, right, male, female, electric, magnetic, information
from the future constantly falling into indeterministic gaps in our present.
But yet we see what we have always seen when we don't expect to see differently.
The observer's bias and the reason why the conditions of our universe is the ideal incubator
for the breeding of galaxy stars and planets.
Modern with dynamics, the theory by which we hold our notion of cause and effect is
only statistical in nature and overly concerned with equilibrium.
Though it purports to be concerned with process and change, its eventual goal is the equalization
of change.
If change is equalized it becomes static with no appreciation for the dynamic processes
that make change under the regime of thermodynamics becoming collapses into being like a piece
of light collapsing into a wave or particle suddenly shy when observed.
The arrow of time defined by thermodynamics must be dissolved, feedback from the future
must guide the development of the present and the past and time is when we notice change.
We notice change when light reaches our eyes, it is time for change, the creation of a new
space-time.
What types of future memories are remembered best, which ones create the strongest reactions,
how does background noise influence the memory?
What senses and sensations do you experience in the future?
What sounds, touch, smell, taste, time, temperature, direction, balance, pain, emotion.
That's all I got, I could read a short story real quick if people want to hear that, but
it'll take me a second to find a solution.
No one was really aware at first that the shift had even occurred.
Nobody started walking backwards or anything like that and the fact that we are passing
backwards into the seasons offered no real indication either since global warming had
already made humans used to irregular weather patterns.
Neither the human mind nor body handle change very well.
At first, the mind-body, fearing what is unfamiliar, creates whatever illusion is necessary to ensure
its survival, holds on for dear life to save its own skin until its back is against the
wall.
But in subtle ways, over time, apparently whether it's unwinding or rewinding, change
begins to ooze its way in both the body and mind, setting into the cracks of things until
reality presents itself to you as a smooth hole one day.
It is now November 7th, 2017, nearly two months into the shift and people are forgetting
what used to be the future, what used to be the past, our already lived memories and experiences
grow hazier each day.
Past memories now only show up in the world of dreams for most of us, evaporating with
the morning dew like any other dream.
Eventually, it begins to sink in that the future and the recent present are behind us
and that we are now witnessing history become the yet to come.
Diaries, journals and newspapers take on a very different meaning these days as ironic
future relics.
With our memories only reaching two months into the old future and fewer and fewer
memories of our old past slash new future, we are stuck with surprisingly short records
of experience.
The past no longer remembered, we begin to repeat most of the things that we did just
the day before.
At first, it was just those little specs of detail that seemed to be missing or out of
place, like no longer being able to save with accuracy whether you had steak, broccoli
and rice for dinner last night, so you have a strong, almost obsessive feeling that you
should have steak, broccoli and rice for dinner again tonight and you do because you just
can't help yourself.
Or that thing you thought you asked your friend to do yesterday and they never did it and
you asked them again today, but it turns out you never asked according to them and now
you kind of can't remember ever having asked either.
But the smaller details are the stitches in the fabric of the bigger details and as the
smaller changes build up, the bigger ones become visible.
Increasingly, large-scale events are beginning to repeat themselves.
And that's the thing, it's still too early to tell if you can meaningfully change something
about the past future and have a different future past outcome or if you're just stuck
reliving it.
Most people report feeling mechanically compelled to repeat their actions from the previous
day now tomorrow.
Modern language, which was based on a unidirectional way of living and communicating in the world,
will essentially need to be rewritten, now that tense is all confused.
Though certain African Native American and Asian communities whose language is dependent on a
more cyclical notion of time are said to be doing better with the shift than in the countries
where Western culture and linear modes of time dominate, such as here in the United States.
For us, said UN, Kenyan, Ambassador, Embassy at a televised conference, time is only meaningful
at the point of the event.
It does not become meaningful by the clock symbol time, some Western mathematical point.
Children under the age of five who have different notions of memory to begin with since they
haven't yet been indoctrinated with routines, clocks, and schedules also seem to be experiencing
the shift noticeably different than the rest of us.
It seems that our childhood amnesia, the inability to recall any memories before the age of three
or four, may be somewhat useful defense mechanism after all.
Fortunately, most of our mechanical memory actions such as driving and walking seem to be
embedded into our muscles and untouched by the flux in time.
But as time continues its slow crawl backward, unraveling, even those motor memories may start
to become unraveled with it.
To delay person, as explained by your local newscaster or celebrity talk show scientist,
the arrow of time has reversed.
We are now moving from chaos to order.
The universe is shrinking, the earth is hurdling back into the shadow of an already traveled path.
But if you get news like that, you quickly start trying to figure out how many seconds you've lived
and how many you should have left until, well, no one knows what just yet.
No one knows what will happen when your own personal timelines clock reaches zero.
There are a multitude of countdown timer apps to download for every kind of phone,
and a few tweaks to your standard kitchen timer will do the trick too.
The puns then start to gossip about how soon the world governments will be forced to coordinate
and make some official changes to time zones, clocks, calendars, and the like.
Those who need to keep track of these things for business purposes have taken to using time one and time two.
Under time one, the old time, today was November 7th, tomorrow was November 8th,
and yesterday was November 6th, like normal.
Under time two, however, the new time, today is November 7th,
yesterday was November 8th, and tomorrow will be November 6th, 2017, again.
Everyone has their speculations about what is causing the shift.
Blogs the world over theorize on everything from military experiments going awry
to the true meaning of the Mayan calendar's end.
Since the shift is estimated to have begun on or around January 1st, 2018,
there are those who report a connection to the New Year, some sort of reset button.
One popular theory among the age 20 to 25 crowd is that time has simply exploded.
Some caught millennial physicists have posited that the rate of information change has increased so rapidly
that the human brain and its current design simply could not process the new information
and is looping back on all the information it had about the world.
A theory recently released by a well-respected Harvard scientific research team at a news conference
states that the speed of light is decreasing and has been over the centuries.
Their research, which they had been conducting years before the shift occurred,
demonstrated that the thermodynamic arrow of time was never actually constant.
The observed unidirectionality of time processes has always been in sharp conflict
with the fact that Newton's laws and Einstein's equations work equally well in either time direction.
The lead researcher Dr. Johnny Singh said when interviewed,
we think that with the speed of light slowing to a critical speed below its limiting speed,
which is the limiting speed for all matter,
it appears to have actually, well, hoaxed it, flipped and reversed the structure of time
as we know and experience it.
We can only perceive the outside world as the assistance of light,
which is why nothing can exceed the rate at which we perceive it.
With the speed of light lowered, our perception of event order may be adjusting with it.
Reporters asked Dr. Singh why the changes in cause and effect were so subtle,
why the shifts seemed only to be having a visible impact on adult human memory,
why, for example, broken eggs were not forming themselves back into full-shelled eggs,
or why water did not now run back into the tap.
Dr. Singh simply shrugged and responded,
now right backwards talking I am.
What?
One reporter asked.
Other reporters had looks on their face ranging from confusion to amusement.
Dr. Singh nodded at the reactions expecting reporters.
I said am I talking backwards right now?
You people need to get it out of your mind that cause and effect is mechanical clockwork and formulaic.
An origin cause and a resulting effect could not be easily or neatly isolated for any event,
even before the shift happened.
At the prime scale, classical causality breaks down.
The curious reporter's expressions contorted into gestures mask,
unsure of what question to ask next, she only smiled.
Dismissing her with a hand showing,
Dr. Singh took it upon himself to turn and speak directly into the camera.
Listen people, human perception, expectation and experience are far more powerful
and responsible for shaping the physical world than we give them credit for.
I suspect that once this thing settles in and the brain does its work to adapt,
we will all start to experience the world even more strangely.
All sorts of treatments and fixes for the new amnesia are being pedaled,
memory bombs, re-memory creams and past pills,
new meditation and prayer programs,
prolonged hypnotic regression sessions all selling at top dollars to celebrities.
If you were bothered by excessive camera phone usage and selfies before,
you are increasingly finding it necessary to document more moments of your life
in order to remember the new past.
But even these moments begin to stack up
and eventually become useless as we begin to lose hope
that we will ever see what we knew as the future again.
The dim hum of fear and anxiety that we get carry grows louder
with each backward day that passes
without a global cure or definitive cause of the shift.
And there will be no finding of the shift's definitive cause.
There may be no actual global cure.
Because what they do not yet know and what I cannot yet reveal
is that I think I may be entirely the cause of the shift.
Me and me alone.
I am the accidental goddess of this universe where the time order has been reversed
and I do not yet know how to fix it or if I'm being perfectly honest
whether I can fix it.
All I know is that it is imperative that I write this all down
before I lose my memory of it too.
I'm going to start at the beginning of when time looped in back in on itself.
Although perhaps by now I should call it the ending.
My name is Afina Newton and I'm a third year PhD candidate
in Parallel University's Department of Physics
with a specialization in quantum mechanics and quantum field theory.
When you start poking and prodding at the nature of reality
you're liable to get some strange results.
Thank you.
Thank you.
