Perspectivism is the idea that no one view of the world is correct; rather, the knowledge of the world and events are determined by one’s individual perspective. This idea shows up frequently in Orbital. For example, a recurring motif for the character Shaun is the painting Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez. The painting challenges the idea of the subject, wherein one typical assumes that the central figure in a painting is the subject. However, Shaun explains, the subject changes with further examinations:
"It’s a painting inside a painting, his teacher had said — look closely. 
Look here. Velázquez, the artist, is in the painting, at his easel, painting a painting, and what he’s painting is the king and queen, but they’re outside of the painting, where we are, looking in, and the only way we know they’re there is because we can see their reflection in a mirror directly in front of us. What the king and queen are looking at is what we’re looking at — their daughter and her ladies-in-waiting, which is what the painting is called — Las Meninas, ‘The Ladies-in-Waiting.’ So what is the real subject of this painting — the king and queen (who are being painted and whose white reflected faces, though small, are in the centre background), their daughter (who is the star in the middle, so bright and blonde in the gloom), her ladies- (and dwarves and chaperones and dog) in-waiting, the furtive man mid-stride in the doorway in the background who seems to be bringing a message, Velázquez (who presence as the painter is declared by the fact of him being in the painting, at his easel painting what is a picture of the king and queen but what also might be Las Meninas itself), or is it us, the viewers, who occupy the same position as the king and queen, who are looking in, and who are being looked at by both Velázquez and the infant princess and, in reflection, by the king and queen? Or, is the subject art itself (which is a set of illusions and tricks and artifices within life), or life itself (which is a set of illusions and tricks and artifices within a consciousness that is trying to understand life through perceptions and dreams and art)?" (Harvey 8-9)
Image credit: Velázquez, Diego, 1599-1660. (1656). Las Meninas [Oil on canvas]. Museo del Prado.
Later, the character Pietro, after a brief moment of viewing the postcard sent to Shaun with the image of Las Meninas, claims that the subject is the dog — that is his truth, and his perspective changes Shaun’s beliefs, who is then suddenly so sure he has understood the painting (159).
Perspectivism
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The Cosmic Zoom
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A Little History of Philosophy
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In an effort to consider and visualize the relative scale of the universe in contrast to life on Earth, influential twentieth-century designers Charles and Ray Eames developed and produced Powers of Ten and the Relative Size of Things in the Universe (1977), a short film that partially inspired Samantha Harvey’s Orbital. The Eames Office website provides more details about Powers of Ten and its 1968 Rough Sketch.