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    • AMMDI is an open-notebook hypertext writing experiment, authored by Mike Travers aka mtraven. It's a work in progress and some parts are more polished than others. Comments welcome! More.
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from Weird Studies/Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams
from Twin Peaks
  • The weirdly normal furnishings in the Black Lodge strongly echo the hotel room at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Highly specific decor that has no apparent connection to whatever is happening in this non-real space.
from hyperstition
  • A sense that culture is all hyperstition; that humans are basically apes who evolved to the point where they could act as hosts for these large-scale ideas. The monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey is a representation of this kind of processs; one genius move of Kubrick's was not to show whatever alien agency might have been behind it; so it appears as itself, not a sign of something else.
from Notes on HAL 9000
  • We've paid a good bit of attention to 2001 in this course, but it struck me as odd, given that it is supposed to be about AI, that it has focused almost entirely on the Dawn of Man section with the man-apes and cosmic match-cut, and pretty much ignored HAL 9000, the tragically doomed AI who is the real heart of the movie, by far its most human character.
from Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic
  • The first part is an almost-wordless depiction of a tribe of hunters inventing art and thus magic. (And language, perhaps). Recalls the man-apes of 2001: A Space Odyssey but these are a bit more down the road to humanity. No monolith in this story, no outside agent. The title does a lot of work: In the Morning of the Mind
from Nihilism in Art
  • Kubrick has a cold eye and his movies tend to revolve around people whose agency is sapped by inimical systems (I think that covers Dr Strangelove, Barry Lyndon, Clockwork Orange , The Shining, Paths of Glory, Full Metal Jacket, and to some extent 2001 although there it is balanced out by Clarke's optimism).
    • Given Kubrick’s comments in rare but revealing interviews throughout his career, it would be fair to say that he dwells upon the nihilistic condition of contemporary culture in order to point beyond such a condition, in the spirit of Nietzsche’s active nihilism. In good dialectical fashion, he highlights the negative in order to indicate our positive capacity for creative and individualistic selfcreation.
    • In Weird Studies/Courses/Kubrick JFM lays out an alternative theory of Kubrick, more like he is showing entrapping systems but also the ways in which individuals or outside forces disrtupt the system.
from 2001: Hal's Legacy
  • A documentary and book that asks the question, how does the real 2001 compared to fictional 2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey

28 Dec 2023 - 28 Dec 2023
Open in Logseq

    • Agency

      • In 2001, there are really no protagonists and the action is driven by whatever unnamed force is behind the monoliths and has, for inscrutable purposes, acted to elevate a bunch of apes into humanity and whatever lies beyond humanity.
      • HAL though is the closest thing to a fully-formed character and his tragic arc is driven by agency failures, as he grapples to serve contradictory goals that end up driving him effectively mad.
      • According to JFM (see Weird Studies/Eyes Wide Shut ) the only real consciousness is the Starchild at the very end (and he goes on to become Alex in Clockwork Orange, a disturbing thought).
    • There's a very faint bit of background audio, in the space station where Heywood Floyd stops off on his way to the moon, where my realname is mentioned, something like "Will Mr. Travers please contact the MET office". This also happens in Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition.