Mirrored-Time
A favorite metaphor of mine.
When looking into two facing mirrors there is a visual representation of the multi-layered dimension of time. We are all familiar with the somewhat infinite effect caused by the continuously reflecting light between the mirrors when directly facing, appearing to have hundreds of replicated spaces, slightly askew but identical and unwavering. Layers of repeating light that imitate space.
The metaphor comes into being when you relate this visual effect to how separate instances of time can seem to overlap onto one another. Some general theory and string theory suggests that all stretches of time would exist at once if you could witness it at the speed of light, just like how the light in each reflection within the mirror exists in sync.
Science fiction has ample fun exploring ideas of altered experience of time through layering, in movies (Interstellar (2014) and Predestination (2014) are some of my recent favorites) and books (some examples of mine being Phillip K. Dick's Ubik (1969) and David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (2004)), which explore multiple realities of time acting in unusually connected or overlapping ways.
But there is a very real and different effect it has on the viewer when it is witnessed first hand. A persons very perceptions come into question or inquiry. Some shrug it off because they think they have seen it before, but to really study the never-ending chamber of reflections, often with you staring back at your self, is a very psychological experience.
Reflections in Light
Mirrors are common today, but used to be an object of spectacle and value; for millennia people have resorted to still water to surface a reflection, and there seems to be a more telling truth when you look through a reflected surface of water.
Every object has reflective qualities, and in nature some substances like water are better at reflecting light. When a pond or stream reflects the sky into your eye, you are visually seeing what is an addition layer of light, the colors of the stream bed being the first layer and the sky as the second,but both layers are viewed simultaneously.
In effect you are see two live-action directions in space at once, and for a person to realize this allows them to literally think of two places at once.
This can be translated through metaphor to seeing two places in time at once (or many more). Imagine you had multiple reflections from different directions, seen from one point, it would almost be like being at multiple places at one moment, visually speaking.
Time based on Light
Each reflection is like another layer or reality (and when I say reality I mean an experienced expanse of space over time) all connected by the speed of light in which it takes to reach your eye.
It fluctuates, it moves, it has ripples and motion. It is not much unlike the ripples and patterns in the air that we hear as sound. It is not much unlike the gravity that balances the planets like a gyroscope, affected by the mass and objects around it. Perhaps it is just as similar to the way time behaves.
Time may also have a moving surface of ripples and waves that change and can be open to interpretations, like in the way the form of a tree seems to jiggle in the water's reflections, it's presence in time would wave and ripple too, bet the actual thing of time could be sensed through it's reflection.
We may very well have an obstructed view of time, perhaps one sided, and it may be an unavoidable fate with the senses we have. The mind is the only thing that manages to overcome the senses, with reason and logic, and with these tools and a visual aid, people can understand more wholly things that take years to write about.
Visualizing More
By creating visual metaphors for how we experience Time, we can easier understand a structure of time that otherwise is beyond explanation. I am more specifically talking about scientific theories and speculations that have very real impact on our lives, but are too abstract or complex to understand in daily terms.
I find so much interest and joy in new ideas that come from these scientific dialogues and theories, and wish more people would too. It can be difficult to understand what others are saying at times in a book, or a study, or a novel, or a theory, but when you do catch understanding it is so rewarding.
What the visual arts can do, and this is what I'm getting at, is help bridge the daily joy of understanding our reality, with the sometimes ill-viewed scientific or intellectual groups that can provide so much information to learn from.
To be more specific, I want the visual arts to bring pleasure to the learning about science and culture. Art is about the new expanses of the mind and using it to gain more understanding of our universe in ways that can seem too abstract or intellectual when put into words. Art can turn theory into something useful that belongs to anyone willing to listen or look.