Imagining the Big Bang

There is a lovely story by Italo Calvino called "All at One Point" that I often assign in the beginning of my classes on cosmology. In it, a narrator discusses the Big Bang and the expansion of the universe as if he and many other characters had been present since the beginning. Describing the events of cosmic history in human terms highlights the absurdity of trying to picture the Big Bang at all. It's just impossible - what would it even mean to picture everything truly being at one point?

One of my students sent me the following link to a video art piece by Taras Hrabowsky:

THINGPIT_HD from taras hrabowsky on Vimeo.

First of all, this is just cool. But also, to me, this brings up some similar themes as the Calvino story (maybe because I just reread it again). Everything around us is part of a constantly changing and evolving cosmos. As we run the "movie" of cosmic history backwards and forwards in our heads, how can we not attempt to literally picture it?