Overture
When you discuss how the idios kosmos is invaded by what I think you describe as the "strangely different koinos kosmos", this makes sense out of a lot of what I perpetually write about ... also, when you discuss how the various idios kosmos-es, whatever the plural is — how a bunch of them may still be only a proliferation, a kind of mutual agreement to extend one idios kosmos, one partial view, from person to person, which is still not a genuine koinos kosmos: Malcolm, you have come up with a totally new concept, in my opinion. To phrase it baldly, there can be shared idios kosmos-es, giving the impression of illusion of a koinos kosmos. (The latter have the aspect of authenticity, the former not, however many people share it.)
What comes to my mind in this regard would be when a tyrannical state so manages the news and so manipulates the ideas and thoughts of its citizens, shutting out facts from their purview entirely, that together they collectively share a sort of ersatz koinos kosmos which is nothing more than the Approved Idios Kosmos manufactured synthetically by the state. It could fail to incorporate into it certain vital elements, without which however many people share it and ratify it, it still fails to partake of reality - in the sense that an authentic koinos kosmos should. Multiple incorrectness, however frequently ratified, does not create accuracy, does it not?"
Stanley Kubrick in Playboy 1968:
It's not a message that I ever intend to convey in words. 2001 is a nonverbal experience; out of two hours and 19 minutes of film, there are only a little less than 40 minutes of dialog. I tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophic content. To convolute McLuhan, in 2001 the message is the medium. I intended the film to be an intensely subjective experience that reaches the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does; to "explain" a Beethoven symphony would be to emasculate it by erecting an artificial barrier between conception and appreciation. You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film - and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level, but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he's missed the point. I think that if 2001 succeeds at all, it is in reaching a wide spectrum of people who would not often give a thought to man's destiny, his role in the cosmos and his relationship to higher forms of life.
I'm sure we'll have sophisticated 3-D holographic television and films, and it's possible that completely new forms of entertainment and education will be devised. You might have a machine that taps the brain and ushers you into a vivid dream experience in which you are the protagonist in a romance or an adventure. On a more serious level, a similar machine could directly program you with knowledge; in this way, you might, for example, easily be able to learn fluent German in 20 minutes. Currently, the learning processes are so laborious and time-consuming that a breakthrough is really needed. On the other hand, there are some risks in this kind of thing; I understand that at Yale they've been engaging in experiments in which the pleasure center of a mouse's brain has been localized and stimulated by electrodes; the result is that the mouse undergoes an eight-hour orgasm. If pleasure that intense were readily available to all of us, we might well become a race of sensually stultified zombies plugged into pleasure stimulators while machines do our work and our bodies and minds atrophy. We could also have this same problem with psychedelic drugs; they offer great promise of unleashing perceptions, but they also hold commensurate dangers of causing withdrawal and disengagement from life into a totally inner-directed kind of Soma world. At the present time, there are no ideal drugs; but I believe by 2001 we will have devised chemicals with no adverse physical, mental or genetic results that can give wings to the mind and enlarge perception beyond its present evolutionary capacities. Actually, up to now, perception on the deepest level has really, from an evolutionary point of view, been detrimental to survival; if primitive man had been content to sit on a ledge by his cave absorbed in a beautiful sunset or a complex cloud con-figuration, he might never have exterminated his rival species - but neither would he have achieved mastery of the planet. Now, however, man is faced with the unprecedented situation of potentially unlimited material and technological resources at his disposal and a tremendous amount of leisure time. At last, he has the opportunity to look both within and beyond himself with a new perspective - without endangering or impeding the progress of the species. Drugs, intelligently used, can be a valuable guide to this new expansion of our consciousness. But if employed just for kicks, or to dull rather than to expand perception, they can be a highly negative influence. There should be fascinating drugs available by 2001; what use we make of them will be the crucial question.
I'm sure we'll have sophisticated 3-D holographic television and films, and it's possible that completely new forms of entertainment and education will be devised. You might have a machine that taps the brain and ushers you into a vivid dream experience in which you are the protagonist in a romance or an adventure. On a more serious level, a similar machine could directly program you with knowledge; in this way, you might, for example, easily be able to learn fluent German in 20 minutes. Currently, the learning processes are so laborious and time-consuming that a breakthrough is really needed. On the other hand, there are some risks in this kind of thing; I understand that at Yale they've been engaging in experiments in which the pleasure center of a mouse's brain has been localized and stimulated by electrodes; the result is that the mouse undergoes an eight-hour orgasm. If pleasure that intense were readily available to all of us, we might well become a race of sensually stultified zombies plugged into pleasure stimulators while machines do our work and our bodies and minds atrophy. We could also have this same problem with psychedelic drugs; they offer great promise of unleashing perceptions, but they also hold commensurate dangers of causing withdrawal and disengagement from life into a totally inner-directed kind of Soma world. At the present time, there are no ideal drugs; but I believe by 2001 we will have devised chemicals with no adverse physical, mental or genetic results that can give wings to the mind and enlarge perception beyond its present evolutionary capacities. Actually, up to now, perception on the deepest level has really, from an evolutionary point of view, been detrimental to survival; if primitive man had been content to sit on a ledge by his cave absorbed in a beautiful sunset or a complex cloud con-figuration, he might never have exterminated his rival species - but neither would he have achieved mastery of the planet. Now, however, man is faced with the unprecedented situation of potentially unlimited material and technological resources at his disposal and a tremendous amount of leisure time. At last, he has the opportunity to look both within and beyond himself with a new perspective - without endangering or impeding the progress of the species. Drugs, intelligently used, can be a valuable guide to this new expansion of our consciousness. But if employed just for kicks, or to dull rather than to expand perception, they can be a highly negative influence. There should be fascinating drugs available by 2001; what use we make of them will be the crucial question.
Marshall McLuhan, The Dew-Line:
A movie like 2001 belongs to 1901, or even to the world of Jules Verne. It is filled with Nineteenth-Century hardware and Newtonian imagery. It has few, if any, twentieth-century qualities. This is natural. The public is not capable of being entertained by awareness of its own condition. Fish do not care to think about water, or men about air pollution.
Ray Bradbury in Castle of Frankenstein Magazine:
Bradbury: I panned part of it. Only part of it. I think it's a gorgeous film. One of the most beautifully photographed pictures in the history of motion pictures. Unfortunately, there are no well directed scenes, and the dialogue is banal to the point of extinction.
Castle of Frankenstein: I read somewhere that was part of Kubrick's intention.
Bradbury: I hope not. I'd like to believe Kubrick is more intelligent than that. I just think he's a bad writer who got in the way of Arthur C. Clarke, who is a wonderful writer.
Dr. E. N. Parker, astrophysicist at the University of Chicago:
The most impressive aspect of the film is, Kubrick's genius for the orchestration of image and sound. Parker, and most of the science department, thought the whole was an imaginative tour de force, and that the usual scientific blunders had been avoided, things like zero-G in orbit, and the fact that meteors don't come by red hot and roaring.
“From a purely fiction point of view, the story was pretty unimaginative but it's really like going to an opera; opera is unimaginative, if you stop to think about it, the plot of an opera is absurd. So you just sit back and listen to the music and enjoy every minute of it.
The space waltzes, in which the machines come into orbit for landings on the space station and on the Moon (to Strauss' The Blue Danube, is perhaps more lush and stunning than anything Visconti has conjured with people in baroque ballrooms).
Kubrick is said to have listened to over 400 tapes in selecting his music. It is somewhat astonishing that the pieces already existed, as they relate so perfectly to the visual material, particularly the works of the Hungarian avant-garde composer, György Ligeti. His Atmospheres, which makes the awesome howl that accompanies the astronaut as he breaks through the "star gate" to his death and regeneration, was written in 1961. Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic presented it in concert in 1964 and it sank back into the sea of new works which are rarely tolerated in the concert hall. What Kubrick demonstrates is that a whole new environment, outside of the concert hall where listening modes are fixed in past traditions, is more receptive to advanced music.”
Joseph Gelmis in Newsday April 5, 1969:
In Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan says, "The artist picks up the message of cultural and technological challenge decades before its transforming impact occurs. He then builds models or Noah's Arks for facing the change that is at hand. The odd spermatozoon-shaped spaceship, The Discovery, in 2001 is a kind of ark.
"The artist," says McLuhan, "is the man in any field, scientific or humanistic, who grasps the implications of his actions and of new knowledge in his own time. He is the man of integral awareness.”
McLuhan speaks of art as "precise advance knowledge of how to cope with the psychic and social consequences of annexed technology" and of the need to "begin a translation of new art forms into social navigation charts." McLuhan adds, "I am curious to know what would happen if art were suddenly seen for what it is, namely, exact information of how to rearrange one's psyche in order to anticipate the next blow from our own extended faculties."
The relevance of 2001 in light of McLuhan's theories is staggering. But no more so than the insight into the film one gets from reading The Savage and Beautiful Country by the British Jungian psychiatrist Alan McGlashan. The Savage and Beautiful Country (Houghton Mifflin: $4) has had a profound influence on my own life and is one of the most significant prophetic works of the decade. Both McLuhan's and McGlashan's books appeared before 2001 was released in 1968. In his foreword, McGlashan says that the purpose of his book is to indicate a new direction of perception: "An almost imperceptive inner change -a willed suspension of conventional judgments, a poised still awareness, a stillness in which long-smothered voices that speak the language of the soul can be heard again.”
"To suggest that mankind is on the verge of a crucial psychic mutation, a breakthrough to an enhanced personality that can grasp without flinching the formidable values of an inner world, while retaining its intellectual grip on externalities - is to sail extremely close to the wind."
He suggests that Nietzsche glimpsed the truth, which hadn't been forcefully promoted since Pythagoras, that what was needed was not another new philosophy, but that "man should surpass himself." And in 2001 the evolutionary stepups move on up from Leakey's man-ape to the current species of homo sapiens to the newborn star-baby in a cocoon - an infant angel, or superman.
Says McGlashan, "The brain, Bergson believes, limits man's conscious awareness of the exterior world to what is practically useful.... Yet one may not reproach the human brain for its ruthless censorship of (other) perceptions. Consciousness has quite enough of a job mediating, like a harassed traffic police-man, between the hostile environment and the precarious spark of individual life which it guards - without being simultaneously distracted by data arriving from beyond space and time.”
"This may, in fact, be the secret of the incalculable strength of the 'common-sense' attitude.... Busy life simply cannot afford the time to listen too raptly to the faint voices hailing him from far beyond the boundaries of his own demanding world."
The Making of Kubrick's 2001 by Jerome Agel:
Major concern throughout production was adequate representation of Saturn. After months of unsuccessful attempts at designing Saturn, Kubrick decided that Jupiter might be visually more interesting and possibly easier to produce. More months were spent in an unsuccessful attempt to produce Saturn. Several top London illustrators were then asked to render Jupiter, all without success.
Final solution: The Jupiter Machine, a device consisting of an optical scanning technique that transformed flat painted artwork into a perfectly accurate sphere. It took an exposure time of two hours for the device to scan an entire globe.
Frederick Ordway’s advice to Kubrick after the film was released:
1. The "Dawn of Man" scene should be shortened, and above all narrated. The importance of this cannot be overemphasized. No one with whom I talked understood the real meaning of this visually beautiful and deeply significant sequence. Its intended impact was lost. Certainly, some reviewers, aided by press releases and Arthur Clarke's lucid comments, knew what it was all about, but the audience doesn't. And the audience not only has a right but a need to know, if the sequence is to have relevance. Go back to the splendid words of narration:
The remorseless drought had lasted now for ten million years, and would not end for another million.The reign of the terrible lizards had long since passed, but here on the continent which would one day be known as Africa, the battle for survival had reached a new climax of ferocity, and the victor was not yet in sight. In this dry and barren land, only the small or the swift or the fierce could flourish, or even hope to exist. The man-apes of the field had none of these attributes, and they were on the long, pathetic road to racial extinction.
The sequence now has real meaning.
Stephen Grosscup in a letter to Stanley Kubrick:
The major implication inherent in 2001 takes place within the first ninety (?) seconds. Had I not already thought of this implication, I would quite probably now be confined in a rest home suffering from an "elation-caused insanity." About 18 months ago I had an idea. I was thinking about the potentiality of home videotape recorders. It seemed to me that when the day came when HVTRs were available to the general public that there would be a lucrative market for prerecorded videotapes, in much the same way that records and prerecorded stereophonic tapes constitute a lucrative market today. I then thought of the possibilities for the content of these prerecorded video tapes. Starting with rock-and-roll, I worked my way up to absolute music.
"What if," I thought, "someone wanted to 'see' Beethoven's Ninth Symphony?" Would you show them an orchestra and chorus? Or what? Then I thought: "What if someone 'filmed music'?" Then I thought: "What if I filmed music?" To make a long story shorter, I then proceeded to read a number of books on photography, buy a small, almost ludicrous super-8mm camera, and put my abstract idea into concrete form. I went out andfimed" the third movement of Gustav Mahler's Seventh Symphony. It worked! It worked beautifully. I was fully aware that I was a rank amateur using a primitive camera that did not even have reflex viewing, and yet upon viewing the final results-about five hours' cutting time was required on my little Sears, Roebuck & Co. editor - I knew beyond any doubt that it worked. Until seeing 2001 I had always thought of filming music in terms of objects existing "naturally" in reality. But it is doubtful that ever in my own lifetime will I be able to "shoot" a natural scene involving three planets. I knew instantly that you had too much reverence for Richard Strauss to tamper with the score - you did — three times!
Response to Grosscup from Stanley Kubrick:
Your letter of 4th May was overwhelming. What can I say in reponse?
Jeremy Bernstein:
When we reached the trailer, I could see that it was used as much for listening for as for writing, for in addition to the usual battery of tape recorders (Kubrick writes rough first drafts of his dialogue by dictating into a recorder, since he finds that this gives it a more natural flow) there was a phonograph and an enormous collection of records, practically all of them of contemporary music. Kubrick told me that he thought he had listened to almost every modern composition available on records in an effort to decide what style of music would fit the film. Here, again, the problem was to find something that sounded unusual and distinctive but not so unusual as to be distracting. In the office collection were records by the practitioners of musique concrète and electronic music in general, and records of works by the contemporary German composer Carl Orff. In most cases, Kubrick said, film music tends to lack originality, and a film about the future might be the ideal place for a really striking score by a major composer.
Stanley Kubrick:
"A number of people thought Floyd went to the planet Clavius. Why they think there's a planet Clavius I'll never know. But they hear him asked, 'Where are you going?', and he says, 'I'm going to Clavius.' With many people -boom- that one word registers in their heads and they don't look at fifteen shots of the Moon; they don't see he's going to the Moon."
Robert Fludd (1574–1637)
Fludd, an English physician, philosopher, and mystic, was a pivotal figure in Renaissance occultism, synthesizing Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, and Christian mysticism in his magnum opus, Utriusque Cosmi Historia (1617–1621). This work explores the macrocosm (universe) and microcosm (humanity), presenting a vision of cosmic harmony. Fludd’s Square and Round Arts are central symbolic principles: the Square Art represents the material, rational, and structured realm—earthly, finite, and ordered—while the Round Art symbolizes the spiritual, holistic, and infinite, evoking universal unity. These align with the Greek concepts of idios kosmos (private, individual world) and koinos kosmos (shared, communal world), where the Square fosters isolated, analytical perception and the Round fosters communal, integrative experience.
In Fludd’s technical history of the macrocosm, Number (mathematics) is the first principle, embodying rational order and the Square Art’s structured clarity, organizing reality into measurable categories. Music, the second principle, embodies harmonic unity, serving as the Round Art’s bridge between material and spiritual realms. Fludd’s omission of Architecture suggests, as scholars like Frances Yates propose, that Music is Architecture, structuring sensory experience through harmonic proportions, akin to a cosmic memory theatre. The Art of Memory, adapted from Renaissance mnemonic traditions, relies on both Square Arts (logical organization) and Round Arts (intuitive unity) to create a mental framework where structured images and harmonious associations enable recollection, uniting the idios kosmos with the koinos kosmos.
Fludd’s Utriusque Cosmi Historia includes the “black square of infinity,” a diagram of a dark, featureless square symbolizing the unmanifest void before creation—pure potentiality beyond rational comprehension. This image juxtaposes the Square Art’s finite order with the Round Art’s boundless unity, foreshadowing modern media like television’s “black cube” as a symbol of sensory limitation. The cultural split between print and theater, emerging post-Renaissance, reflects this tension. The mass production of printed books, enabled by Gutenberg’s press (c. 1450), epitomized the Square Art, prioritizing the eye and fostering a linear, rational idios kosmos. Print marginalized oral, communal traditions like Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre (1599–1613), which embodied the Round Art’s multi-sensory, participatory koinos kosmos, setting the stage for modern media dynamics.
Marshall McLuhan’s media theories, articulated in The Gutenberg Galaxy(1962) and Understanding Media(1964), provide a framework to interpret this split. McLuhan posits that media are extensions of human senses, altering sensory ratios—the balance of sensory engagement. Print, a “hot” medium, isolates the eye, creating visual space: a linear, rational, individualistic mode of perception aligned with Fludd’s Square Art and Number. By giving us “an eye for an ear,” print fostered an idios kosmos, disconnecting individuals from communal experience. Oral and electronic media, conversely, evoke acoustic space, a holistic, multi-sensory, participatory mode akin to Fludd’s Round Art and Music, creating a koinos kosmos.
By the 1960’s, the black cube of television imploded into a black hole, devouring all media into a flat event horizon. Despite its “cool,” mosaic-like audiovisuals, television’s increasingly vivid imagery and pre-synchronized sound prioritized the eye, fragmenting attention and fostering passivity. This suppressed the Round Art’s vitality, replacing the Globe Theatre’s communal acoustic space with a domestic, visually dominant idios kosmos. Television conditioned sense ratios so quickly and completely it trapped viewers in an idios kosmos so ubiquitous and strong that Philip K. Dick referred to it as a “black iron prison”.
Stanley Kubrick, aware of McLuhan’s theories (evidenced by his comment about convoluting “the medium is the message”), recognized television’s Square Art dominance as a cultural and corporate force designed to suppress the Round Art and occlude the Logos. Kubrick convoluted McLuhan by crafting 2001: A Space Odyssey as a monolithic medium, where the film’s form—a silent, music-driven structure—becomes the message, actively reshaping sensory ratios to restore acoustic space’s koinos kosmos and manifest the Logos.
Kubrick’s convolution lies in three dimensions. First, he embraces McLuhan’s thesis by making 2001’s sensory form the primary conveyor of meaning. With only 40 minutes of dialogue in a 139-minute runtime, the film relies on precise visuals (e.g., geometric compositions, slit-scan effects) and non-diegetic music (e.g., Also sprach Zarathustra, The Blue Danube), requiring viewers to synthesize sight and sound. Unlike television’s pre-synchronized narratives, 2001’s ambiguity—evident in sequences like the space station’s cosmic waltz or the Stargate’s sensory overload—demands active participation, aligning with acoustic space’s holistic engagement.
Second, Kubrick complicates McLuhan by transforming the medium into a transcendental tool. While McLuhan analyzed media’s sensory effects, Kubrick uses 2001’s form to guide viewers beyond television’s idios kosmos toward a cosmic, universal awareness. The film’s music, acting as Fludd’s architectural framework, harmonizes rational visuals (Number, Square Art) with spiritual unity (Music, Round Art), evoking the Logos as a principle of cosmic order. For example, Zarathustra’s triumphant chords during the monolith’s appearances frame evolutionary leaps, suggesting a divine intelligence that transcends visual space’s fragmentation.
Third, Kubrick subverts McLuhan’s descriptive framework with a prescriptive vision. By structuring 2001 like a silent film with music, he flips television’s Square Art design, restoring the ear’s role and countering its passive idios kosmos. The film’s theatrical, widescreen format recreates the Globe Theatre’s communal koinos kosmos, uniting audiences in a shared sensory experience. Kubrick’s convolution thus transforms McLuhan’s insight into a cinematic intervention, using the medium’s form to manifest the Logos in an audience conditioned by television’s sensory and spiritual void.
Kubrick’s art in 2001 seeks to allow the Logos to manifest by crafting a cinematic memory theatre that marries Fludd’s Square and Round Arts. Number’s Square Art is evident in the film’s mathematical precision—geometric compositions (e.g., the monolith’s 1:4:9 proportions), orbital mechanics, and slit-scan effects in the Stargate—reflecting rational, visual structure. Music’s Round Art, acting as architecture, structures the sensory experience. The Blue Danube’s waltz harmonizes the space station’s motion into a cosmic dance, while Ligeti’s Atmosphères creates a transcendent framework for the Stargate, evoking the Logos as a universal order.
This synthesis counters television’s idios kosmos, which conditions audiences to a visually dominant, fragmented perception devoid of the Logos. Television’s pre-synchronized audiovisuals reduce viewer agency, aligning with Number’s rational control but lacking Music’s holistic vitality. 2001’s silent, music-driven form demands active synthesis of sight and sound, mirroring the Globe Theatre’s participatory acoustic space. For example, the Dawn of Man sequence, with Zarathustra’s crescendos amplifying the monolith’s impact, invites viewers to perceive a divine intelligence, restoring the Logos through sensory reengagement.
The black monolith, appearing at evolutionary junctures (Dawn of Man, Moon, Jupiter), symbolizes television’s black cube and Fludd’s black square of infinity—a Square Art medium embodying the idios kosmos. Its silent, geometric form reflects Number’s rational order, trapping characters and viewers in visual space’s isolation, devoid of the Logos. Kubrick flips this by pairing the monolith with music, transforming it into a catalyst for acoustic space. Zarathustra’s chords or Atmosphères’ dissonance create an architectural harmony, guiding viewers from the idios kosmos to the koinos kosmos. The Stargate sequence, with its numerical visuals and musical immersion, manifests the Logos as a cosmic, unifying force, akin to Fludd’s Round Art.
Kubrick’s intellectual engagement with McLuhan, confirmed by his convolution comment, and his meticulous filmmaking—choosing pre-existing music, minimizing dialogue, and using innovative visuals—demonstrate intent to create a monolithic medium. By aligning 2001 with Fludd’s Number (Square) and Music (Round), Kubrick counters television’s idios kosmos, restoring the Logos through a cinematic memory theatre. The film’s theatrical format recreates the Globe’s koinos kosmos, uniting audiences in a shared experience of cosmic order.
2001’s synthesis of Square and Round Arts fosters a transformative koinos kosmos, manifesting the Logos and countering television’s sensory and spiritual void. However, its intensity and ambiguity may alienate viewers conditioned by television’s idios kosmos, limiting its universal impact.
Kubrick recognized television as a Square Art extension of print, suppressing the Round Art’s koinos kosmos, as embodied by the Globe Theatre. 2001, a monolithic medium marrying Number’s rational structure and Music’s architectural harmony, convolutes McLuhan’s “the medium is the message” by using its form to restore acoustic space and manifest the Logos. The monolith symbolizes television’s idios kosmos, while its music-driven role catalyzes a shift to the koinos kosmos, fulfilling Fludd’s memory theatre. Kubrick’s art rebalances sensory ratios, guiding audiences from a fragmented, Logos-devoid world to a shared, cosmic reality, though its complexity may restrict its reach.
