A kaleidoscope without any objects inside (glass beads, cellophane, etc.) that allows in reflections of the view outside of itself is called a teleidoscope. Either way, whether the views are within it or beyond it, both can potentially create beautiful shapes with seemingly endless variations by simply fragmenting and folding the vantage, as is their unique ability. The results contain abstractions of familiar and common elements, except that the process of slicing, shuffling, and rearranging can bring out stunning possibilities.

Mozart's Don Giovanni featured three different ensembles playing different pieces at different tempos simultaneously. Several other composers, such as Biber and Mahler, also wrote pieces which attempted to give the impression of multiple works happening at the same time, either by happening atop each other, by abruptly interrupting one another, or by one coming to the fore as another fades away (as in Ives' Central Park In The Dark, where it was used to recreate the sound of walking through the city).

Early in the 19th century, the Cubists - having Braque and Picasso as leaders (both of whom later went on to develop and name "collage" as a painting technique) - and the Futurists each set out to represent it's subjects not from a single-point perspective at a fixed time, but from multiple vantages in space and time simultaneously, as if the viewer were surrounding it always and compressing numerous views and moments towards a singular one.

In Hollywood there is a popular effect called "bullet-time" (named for the prevalent examples of a gun being fired and time suddenly slowing to allow the camera to pan around the bullet in mid-shot, as used in The Matrix films and such similar eye candy). Of course, filmmakers have often manipulated playback speed and direction and used frequent cuts and edits to better guide our comprehension, emotion, or excitement through a scene.

If witnessing an object nearing the event horizon of a black hole, a viewer would notice the object appearing to behave more slowly until finally being seemingly suspended in time, a time dilation caused by the increasing gravitational pull actually sucking the very image inward. Nothing, including any matter (the object) or light (the image of the object), can ever return once it reaches the event horizon. From outside, objects would appear frozen in time until gradually fading into the singularity, a point at the center of a black hole with zero volume and infinite density, as it contains all of the mass that has entered it. Despite what the viewer might see, however, the object would actually be splayed and pulverized before it's own matter crushes in on itself as it is compressed into the singularity. Within the radiating glow of the accretion disc is a point so small as to be nothing, but so heavy that it may as well be everything.

For obvious reasons, religions the world over have represented the godhead with an eye (a ring of brilliant color around a black hole that nothing can escape from); something that sees and knows all, including all of the past and the future, at all times. Some believe in a creator who conjured everything from nothing and looks upon the creation from afar. Others have considered that everything was made of a creator and that all things are a part of it and it a part of all things; all vantages and times perpetually of it and therefore each other, as it would be within a singularity. Either way, whether the views are within it or beyond it, both can potentially create beautiful shapes with seemingly endless variations by simply fragmenting and folding the vantage, as is their unique ability.

Eric Hall live at Steinberg Auditorium at Washington University, Saint Louis, MO on December 4th, 2010:
Video: vimeo.com/17503827