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I recently discovered something interesting about this film! There's a scene where Hal 9000 sings a song called "Daisy Bell" which he was taught by his first i

I recently discovered something interesting about this film! There's a scene where Hal 9000 sings a song called "Daisy Bell" which he was taught by his first instructor. Interestingly, in 1961, the IBM 704 computer performed a rendition of the same song at Bell Labs during the earliest demonstration of computer speech synthesis. Arthur C. Clarke, who happened to be present, later told Kubrick about it, and it was incorporated into the film. I also discovered a fascinating paper called "The Alien Voice" that delves into the history of Vocoder technology - from Homer Dudley's inspiration to build it in 1928 to Alan Turing and colleagues modifying it into a secure speech system called SIGSALY for World War II. The paper also discusses how this technology led to the emergence of computer-generated music. From the paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333056608_The_Alien_Voice_Alvin_Lucier%27s_North_American_Time_Capsule_1967 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333056608_The_Alien.... > A half-decade later, back at Bell Labs, the Vocoder found its way into the earliest experiments with computer music. Engineers in the acoustic research division were working with Dudley's and Turing's technologies to convert analog voice signals into digital data. In an effort to send several conversations down a single telephone line, they enlisted the aid of the computer. One evening, two of these Bell engineers, Max Mathews and John Pierce, attended a concert of piano music at nearby Drew University. Unimpressed by the performance, one whispered to the other, "The computer can do better than this." Taking up the challenge, Mathews began to experiment with using the computer as a music synthesizer and, a year later, launched MUSIC I, the first computer program dedicated to sound synthesis. > All of a sudden, a group of engineers and scientists had become composers. Linguist and psychoacoustician Newman Guttman produced the first piece of computer music in 1957, a seventeen-second demonstration titled "The Silver Scale." Pierce, head of Bell Labs' communication sciences division, responded in 1959 with a cheery anthem called "Stochatta." Mathews himself composed a series of longer and more abstract pieces in which the computer was made to approximate the sound of a singing voice. Then, in I961, with Bell physicist John Larry Kelly, he recorded a computer version of the I89z pop song "Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)." Using Vocoder technology, Kelly programmed the IBM 704 to sing the famous song over Mathews's calliopelike electronic accompaniment. Novelist Arthur C. Clarke, who happened to be visiting his friend Pierce, overheard the demonstration and incorporated it into his screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which, at the film's climax, the dying computer HAL 9000 offers "Daisy" as his swan song.

sumtechguy 4y ago
What I find interesting is there were 2 cuts of that movie. One to show investors and the gov, and the one he released into theaters. He wanted to show that space is wildly dangerous, empty and lonely. However, the people paying the bill which he needed wanted a different movie and more upbeat and hopeful about space travel. I just recently learned about that interesting bit of trivia about the movie.
- jedberg 4y ago
  Oh wow, I didn't know this! I'd love to see the other cut.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  I've never heard this despite following the history of this film for most of the 50+ years it's been released. Source?
  - jfreitas 4y ago
    Not sure if it's accurate but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxiB3qtMRHc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxiB3qtMRHc has a discussion about it
    - dredmorbius 4y ago
      What that video says is that there are two narratives in the film. Not that there were two separate versions (different edits) produced. Kubric did spin the investors by having A.C. Clarke talk up his version of the story, which was strongly techno-optimistic, whilst Kubrick's version was much, much darker. Who's the speaker? He's uncredited and the video doesn't identify him. There seems to be mention of an alternative introductory scene that was shown to studio execs here: According to Wikipedia's page on 2001, an early cut of the film was shown to MGM studio executives and featured a ten minute black and white opening. This sequence featured interviews with scientists about the possibility of extra-terrestrial life, but after the screening Kubrick had the interview sequence removed from the film. <http://www.collativelearning.com/2001%20chapter%209.html http://www.collativelearning.com/2001%20chapter%209.html> Clarke mentions this version in his book about 2001, The Lost Worlds of 2001: One of the problems facing any science-fiction writer who is aiming for the general public is how much to explain, and how much to take for granted. He must try not to leave his readers baffled, but at the same time must avoid those disguised lectures which are all too typical of the genre (“Now tell me, Professor….”). At one time, Stanley hoped to get around this problem — as far as the movie was concerned — by opening with a short documentary — type prelude, in which noted scientists and philosophers would establish the credibility of our theme. With this idea in mind, he sent Roger Caras around the world, to interview, on film, more than twenty authorities on space, computers, anthropology — even religion. They included the astronomers Harlow Shapley, Sir Bernard Lovell, Fred Whipple, Frank Drake, Dr. Margaret Mead (who was a space bug long before Sputnik) and the great Russian scientist A. I. Oparin, the first man to point out (in the 1920’s) a plausible way in which life could arise from the simple chemicals of the primitive Earth. These interviews, many of them quite fascinating, were never used — a fact which understandably upset some of the distinguished and busy men involved. (Transcripts of several interviews may be found in Jerry Agel’s The Making of Kubrick’s 2001.) But as it turned out, to have incorporated them in the film would have been aesthetically impossible; it also proved to be unnecessary. We did not have to educate the public, as the headlong rush of astronautical events did it for us. - Arthur C. Clarke, The Lost Worlds of 2001, Ch. 13, "The Birth of HAL". Wikipedia's source for the similar description is from Agel, Jerome, ed. (1970). The Making of Kubrick's 2001. New York: New American Library. ISBN 0-451-07139-5

sumtechguy 4y ago

What I find interesting is there were 2 cuts of that movie. One to show investors and the gov, and the one he released into theaters. He wanted to show that space is wildly dangerous, empty and lonely. However, the people paying the bill which he needed wanted a different movie and more upbeat and hopeful about space travel. I just recently learned about that interesting bit of trivia about the movie.

jedberg 4y ago
Oh wow, I didn't know this! I'd love to see the other cut.
dredmorbius 4y ago
I've never heard this despite following the history of this film for most of the 50+ years it's been released. Source?
- jfreitas 4y ago
  Not sure if it's accurate but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxiB3qtMRHc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxiB3qtMRHc has a discussion about it
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    What that video says is that there are two narratives in the film. Not that there were two separate versions (different edits) produced. Kubric did spin the investors by having A.C. Clarke talk up his version of the story, which was strongly techno-optimistic, whilst Kubrick's version was much, much darker. Who's the speaker? He's uncredited and the video doesn't identify him. There seems to be mention of an alternative introductory scene that was shown to studio execs here: According to Wikipedia's page on 2001, an early cut of the film was shown to MGM studio executives and featured a ten minute black and white opening. This sequence featured interviews with scientists about the possibility of extra-terrestrial life, but after the screening Kubrick had the interview sequence removed from the film. <http://www.collativelearning.com/2001%20chapter%209.html http://www.collativelearning.com/2001%20chapter%209.html> Clarke mentions this version in his book about 2001, The Lost Worlds of 2001: One of the problems facing any science-fiction writer who is aiming for the general public is how much to explain, and how much to take for granted. He must try not to leave his readers baffled, but at the same time must avoid those disguised lectures which are all too typical of the genre (“Now tell me, Professor….”). At one time, Stanley hoped to get around this problem — as far as the movie was concerned — by opening with a short documentary — type prelude, in which noted scientists and philosophers would establish the credibility of our theme. With this idea in mind, he sent Roger Caras around the world, to interview, on film, more than twenty authorities on space, computers, anthropology — even religion. They included the astronomers Harlow Shapley, Sir Bernard Lovell, Fred Whipple, Frank Drake, Dr. Margaret Mead (who was a space bug long before Sputnik) and the great Russian scientist A. I. Oparin, the first man to point out (in the 1920’s) a plausible way in which life could arise from the simple chemicals of the primitive Earth. These interviews, many of them quite fascinating, were never used — a fact which understandably upset some of the distinguished and busy men involved. (Transcripts of several interviews may be found in Jerry Agel’s The Making of Kubrick’s 2001.) But as it turned out, to have incorporated them in the film would have been aesthetically impossible; it also proved to be unnecessary. We did not have to educate the public, as the headlong rush of astronautical events did it for us. - Arthur C. Clarke, The Lost Worlds of 2001, Ch. 13, "The Birth of HAL". Wikipedia's source for the similar description is from Agel, Jerome, ed. (1970). The Making of Kubrick's 2001. New York: New American Library. ISBN 0-451-07139-5