France Jobin - The Fluidity of Time Does Not Exist (2021)

Time is mysterious; I never realized how much until I studied it in the context of Quantum Physics. The mystery stems from a common-sense way of thinking - that the present moment, which we call “now” is not fixed but moves constantly in the direction of future. This is what we refer to as the flow of time.

The common-sense concept of time is as follows: Imagine a line with an arrow pointing towards the right, each point on the line represent a fixed moment, a triangle drawn with the tip touching the line represents the continuous moving point, the present moment. It is supposed to move from left to right. Some believe particular events as being fixed, and the line itself as moving past them so that moments from the future sweep past the present moment to become past moments. Thinking of time as a line simply implies a sequence of points at different positions, so any moving point can be thought of as a sequence of motionless “snapshot” versions of itself, at each moment. It is similar to a sequence of still photos, projected onto a screen. Collectively, the images are moving but individually, the image never changes.

This idea that the present moment seems to be moving forward in time is defined relative to our consciousness. But our consciousness however, cannot do that. Nothing can move from one moment to another, To exist at all at a particular moment means to exist forever. Our consciousness exists in all our (waking) moments. We do not experience time flowing, or passing. What we experience are differences between our present perceptions and our present memories of past perceptions. We interpret those difference correctly, as evidence that the universe changes with time. We also interpret them incorrectly, as evidence that our consciousness, or the present, is something that moves through time.

The passing of time is intrinsic to the world; it is born of the world itself, out of the relations between quantum events that are the world, and that themselves generate their own time.

The fluidity of time does not exist, is my attempt to put this concept into sound, creating a piece of music, which itself is created within a span of time….