About Skibinskipedia™

Design, Architecture, Photography & Urbanitas from NYC™
—B Dean Skibinski, Proprietor.

Skibinskipedia™ is the online wunderkammer of B Dean Skibinski, a graphic designer and writer based in New York City. Launched in 2010, it has since been a repository of inspirations and links related to design, architecture, art, film, literature, music, photography, and, of course, New York City. I take great care to either retain or add accurate attribution to each post, but if for some reason any citations are missing or incorrect, please don't hesitate to let me know. Additionally, if work I've featured is yours and you for some reason don't want it featured, I shall be happy to remove it upon your request. Please email or message me as you wish.

Twitter Feed

Playboy’s interview with Stanley Kubrick in its entirety [1968]

kateoplis:

Playboy: Much of the controversy surrounding 2001 deals with the meaning of the metaphysical symbols that abound in the film — the polished black monoliths, the orbital conjunction of Earth, Moon and sun at each stage of the monoliths’ intervention in human destiny, the stunning final kaleidoscopic maelstrom of time and space that engulfs the surviving astronaut and sets the stage for his rebirth as a “star-child” drifting toward Earth in a translucent placenta. One critic even called 2001 “the first Nietzschean film,” contending that its essential theme is Nietzsche’s concept of man’s evolution from ape to human to superman. What was the metaphysical message of 2001?

Kubrick: 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. But even in the case of someone who is highly intelligent, certain ideas found in 2001 would, if presented as abstractions, fall rather lifelessly and be automatically assigned to pat intellectual categories; experienced in a moving visual and emotional context, however, they can resonate within the deepest fibers of one’s being.

—Playboy’s interview with Stanley Kubrick in its entirety [1968]

[Note: The link to the interview is my own; the link provided in the original post wasn’t a live one.]

Tags Film Stanley Kubrick 2001: A Space Odyssey Playboy Interviews 1968 Art Interpretation

Reblogged from kateoplis  Source kateoplis

gq: oldhollywood: No, I don’t mind discussing it, on the lowest level, that is, straightforward explanation of the plot. You begin with an artifact left on earth four million years ago by extraterrestrial explorers who observed the behavior of the man-apes of the time and decided to influence their evolutionary progression. Then you have a second artifact buried deep on the lunar surface and programmed to signal word of man’s first baby steps into the universe - a kind of cosmic burglar alarm. And finally there’s a third artifact placed in orbit around Jupiter and waiting for the time when man has reached the outer rim of his own solar system. When the surviving astronaut, Bowman, ultimately reaches Jupiter, this artifact sweeps him into a force field or star gate that hurls him on a journey through inner and outer space and finally transports him to another part of the galaxy, where he’s placed in a human zoo approximating a hospital terrestrial environment drawn out of his own dreams and imagination. In a timeless state, his life passes from middle age to senescence to death. He is reborn, an enhanced being, a star child, an angel, a superman, if you like, and returns to earth prepared for the next leap forward of man’s evolutionary destiny. That is what happens on the film’s simplest level. The plot of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” as explained by Stanley Kubrick. “This is what happens on the film’s simplest level.” LMFAO! I love Kubrick.

gq:

oldhollywood:

No, I don’t mind discussing it, on the lowest level, that is, straightforward explanation of the plot. You begin with an artifact left on earth four million years ago by extraterrestrial explorers who observed the behavior of the man-apes of the time and decided to influence their evolutionary progression.

Then you have a second artifact buried deep on the lunar surface and programmed to signal word of man’s first baby steps into the universe - a kind of cosmic burglar alarm.

And finally there’s a third artifact placed in orbit around Jupiter and waiting for the time when man has reached the outer rim of his own solar system. When the surviving astronaut, Bowman, ultimately reaches Jupiter, this artifact sweeps him into a force field or star gate that hurls him on a journey through inner and outer space and finally transports him to another part of the galaxy, where he’s placed in a human zoo approximating a hospital terrestrial environment drawn out of his own dreams and imagination. In a timeless state, his life passes from middle age to senescence to death. He is reborn, an enhanced being, a star child, an angel, a superman, if you like, and returns to earth prepared for the next leap forward of man’s evolutionary destiny.

That is what happens on the film’s simplest level.

The plot of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” as explained by Stanley Kubrick.

“This is what happens on the film’s simplest level.”

LMFAO!

I love Kubrick.

Tags Film History Theory Plot 2001: A Space Odyssey Stanley Kubrick This Is What Happens On The Film's Simplest Level LMFAOOOOO! Brilliant

Reblogged from The GQ Tumblr  Source oldhollywood