In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, characters are killed left and right. Most of them fall victim to the weapons of the time period: swords, daggers, and the like. In modern times, people live under a far greater shadow: the impending nuclear holocaust. A threat illustrated in a beautiful, yet terrifying, way by artist Isao Hashimoto. His video, “A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945” shows all 2056 nuclear explosions that have ever occurred on Earth. The piece is beautiful, thought-provoking, and extraordinarily information-dense. In his video, which consists almost entirely of a map, Hashimoto assigns every nation a color and tone. When that county detonates a nuclear weapon, the country’s tone is heard and a flash of the country’s color appears in the exact geographic location where that weapon exploded. Watching the video creates an eerie song as each nation’s tone is heard. The viewer can learn a lot about the history of nuclear weapons by watching the video.
In Macbeth’s time, people, especially those in power, had to live in fear of being attacked by an assailant with a blade. Today, people worry about the chances of the world being blown to smithereens by mutually assured destruction. This change parallels other changes in society. As technology improves, society becomes more globalized, with billions of people interacting in a less-personal, virtual way. This contrasts to the times in which Macbeth lived, where it would have been rare to meet someone from a different town that your own. Duncan worried–though perhaps not enough–about being murdered by someone he knew personally. Conversely, people now live with the threat of being blown up by some across the globe who could never know your name. The threats that society lives with remain, though in different forms. And even though modern technology makes it possible to kill millions at once, a given person now is no more likely to die as a result of nuclear attack than a given person in Macbeth’s time.
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