Introduction
This is an extract from an early version of the script of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), written by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. What Kubrick describes is a kind of momentary political balance achieved by means of potential self-annihilation. Of course, on the following page, they write, “no one could expect it to last forever.” This fiction was not far off-course from a potential reality, since just years earlier the Soviets tested their fifty-megaton (downscaled from its potential hundred-megaton) Tsar Bomba, and the USA was testing out its nuclear bombs in outer space. To put this into perspective, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a fifteen-kiloton nuclear bomb – equivalent to 15,000 kilograms of TNT. Fifty megatons are equivalent to fifty million kilos of TNT. Thousand-megaton bombs were far from an abstraction for the governments involved – in fact, they were incredibly close to becoming a reality. According to Gerard Piel (Rose 2001, 171) of Scientific American, “the effects of a thousand-megaton bomb ‘exploded at satellite altitude’ could be to ‘set six of America’s western states afire.’” The Cold War was defined by moments of self-destructive tension pushed to unprecedented extremes, where nuclear warfare and the mass-murder of hundreds of millions of civilians were at stake. It was the result of two monumental mass-utopian projects clashing: Communism and Capitalism – what Susan Buck-Morss (2000, xi) calls the “dreamworlds of modernity.”
In its most simple form, the intention of this essay is to parallel the emergence of a notion of “infinity”, which was established in the Renaissance, with its subsequent dissolution during the nuclear apocalyptic tensions of the Cold War. My argument will be principally drawing from the writings of the art historian Erwin Panofsky, cultural geographer Denis Cosgrove, and art theorist Jonathan Crary.[1] In Part I, I will take a closer look at the concept of a “planetary imaginary,” looking at how it transformed during the Cold War, and how it is grounded in similar developments which occurred during the Renaissance.I will then link the planetary imaginary to new modes of vision by considering the role of the television and how it can be better understood by grounding it in the philosophical discourses surrounding the camera obscura during the Renaissance. In Part II, I will be looking at mass media – specifically the ‘nuclear apocalyptic’ – and how it reshaped psychophysiological domestic, public, and urban spaces in Cold War America. In Part III, I will look at the architectural forms represented within 2001: A Space Odyssey, and how they serve to illuminate an understanding of the pervasive anxieties of the nuclear apocalyptic time in which they were created: Earth as a finite and fragile resource.
Immediately after the nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a group of scientists set up the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, a journal intending to address the increasing concern over the perils of harnessing nuclear power. It was spearheaded by Eugene Rabinowitch, and its frequent contributors included the likes of Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Bertrand Russell. Humanity had crossed a line never before conceived as it became capable of self-annihilation. The world, in the years following World War II, could from then on come to an artificial end. In 1947, they introduced what was initially called the Bulletin Clock graphic– it would become internationally recognized as the Doomsday Clock. It was placed on the cover of the journal, and it represented the likelihood and proximity of a human-made global catastrophe. The hour hand was at 12, and the minute hand would be closer to or farther from midnight depending on how close scientists felt humanity was to self-destruction. The Doomsday Clock became one of the most enduring icons of the atomic age, and to this day remains in action – every January they decide where the minute hand is and release an in-depth analysis of the most urgent concerns that humanity faces. What this clock implies is a transition from modern time – and its incessant forward motion – to time which moves both forward and backwards, but perpetually stands in relation to an artificial, human-provoked end. For humanity, time was no longer taken for granted, it was no longer inherently infinite. The closest the clock had ever been placed to midnight was 1953, when it was “two minutes to midnight.” In the 1953 report, Rabinowich (1953, 294) says, “The hands of the clock of doom have moved again. Only a few more swings of the pendulum and, from Moscow to Chicago, atomic explosions will strike midnight for Western civilization.” World War III was only “two minutes” away. Since then, the minute hand has resided in the relatively safe area between 7 and 14 minutes. As of this January 2019, the Bulletin has placed the minute hand once again at two minutes: according to the world’s leading scientists, we are as close to self-annihilation today as we were in in 1953. The report, edited by John Mecklin (2019), states, “Humanity now faces two simultaneous existential threats, either of which would be cause for extreme concern and immediate attention. These major threats – nuclear weapons and climate change – were exacerbated this past year by the increased use of information warfare to undermine democracy around the world, amplifying risk from these and other threats and putting the future of civilization in extraordinary danger.” As we live in a world defined by the normalization and dissemination of fake news and virtual reality, it is important to look at how our present-day “reality” is built upon a foundation established in the midst of nuclear apocalyptic tensions and the space race in the decades following World War II.
The dissemination and universalization of the then-new television penetrated the American domestic space and permeated the American imaginary. It presented the general public with spaces other than the ones they inhabited on a daily basis, which in turn molded a new spatial practice and global understanding deeply grounded in the spaces of the image world as opposed to a physical reality. On a macro level, domination of outer space – the mammoth objective of the “dreamworlds” – was the most effective way to dominate political and domestic space and, as a result, the human mind. The subsequent “space race” came with the nuclear arms race, and both were virtually projected into the intimate domestic spaces of average civilians. The constant nuclear annihilation narrative dominated the psychological space of the American public. From within their living rooms, Americans witnessed, live, the first humans walking on the Moon, as well as the detonation of the most powerful bombs ever built by mankind. The exploration of outer space generated a new spatial – spherical – imaginary which framed Earth as a self-contained entity – a “Blue Marble” – floating in space, fragile and finite. In the words of Buck-Morss (2000, 33), “An alternative planetary imaginary was precisely what the Cold War ultimately provided… although, given its logics of planetary destruction, the coherence of this new picture was dubious at best.”
Spherical Imaginary
Earthbound Humans are unable to embrace more than a tiny part of the planetary surface. But in their imagination, they can grasp the whole of the earth …
(Cosgrove 2001, ix)
The end of World War II marked the start of a new a new earthly, or spherical imaginary – a new vision of the Earth as a whole. It was Nazi Germany which thrust humanity into the Space Age with their V-2 rocket-missile, which was spearheaded by Wernher von Braun. On the 3rdof October 1942, it would become the first human made object to reach outer space. In 1944, Germany would use it to reign terror on Europe as they launched a total of 3,172 V-2 missiles, hitting Belgium, the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands. Almost half of all V-2s launched – 1,402, to be precise – hit London. Following the defeat of the Nazis, the United States and the USSR absorbed the V-2 rockets that remained and took them to their respective countries. German rocket scientists and engineers were taken too, and von Braun would pioneer and head the US space program, later named NASA.[2] The first photographs of Earth from outer space were taken on the 24th of October 1946, after the US space program adapted one of their annexed V-2 rockets to carry a 35mm motion-picture camera as opposed to an explosive warhead. For the first time, the curvature of Earth was more than a theoretical idea; it could be witnessed with one’s own eyes. The first photograph of Earth from the Moon, later named Earthrise, would be taken just over two decades later by astronauts on NASA’s Apollo 8 mission in 1968. Instead of an immense and seemingly infinite entity, Earthrise showed the Earth as a small sphere, floating in an expanse of nothingness. In the decades following the end of WWII, the US and the USSR would embark on a race to dominate that space, not as a humanitarian mission, but rather as a means to spatially, and therefore psychologically, dominate one another. In this pursuit of spatial domination, they took humanity to the brink of self-annihilation. In 1968, Earthrise made the world miniscule in the public imaginary, and mass media represented nuclear self-annihilation as not only possible, but also a probable near future.
Although the Space Age marked the transition into a new era of visuality and spherical imaginary, it is important to take into account that its newness was not to do with the fact that humanity was finally able to view the world as a sphere. It was, rather, the transition from understanding it as an infinite resource to a finite and fragile object. The spherical imaginary of the Cold War was not radically different from the various epochs that had preceded it. In his book, Apollo’s Eye, Denis Cosgrove (2001, 3) describes, “…until 1968 'seeing’ the spherical earth meant imagining or picturing it, an activity often inseparable from visionary experience. To achieve the global view is to lose the bonds of the earth, to escape the shackles of time, and to dissolve the contingencies of daily life for a universal moment of reverie and harmony. Reverie is the closest English translation of the Latin somnium, the sense of imaginative dreaming…” Earthrise provided a visual aid to what had been imagined for millennia. Between the late 15th century and the 17th century, the Western spherical imaginary underwent a paradigm shift – the first steps towards a modern conception of the world. It was, of course, Christopher Columbus’ attempt in 1492 to use the understanding of Earth as a sphere to reach Asia heading westward from Europe, which resulted in the discovery of the “New World.” Ferdinand Magellan would be the first to circumnavigate the Earth, bringing all terrestrial space together onto a unified globe. Throughout Apollo’s Eye, Cosgrove problematizes western theoretical conceptions and visual representations of the world as a means of domination and control, or territorial authority. He says (2001, 16), “To imagine the earth as a globe is essentially a visual act… Such a gaze is implicitly imperial, encompassing a geometric surface to be explored and mapped, inscribed with content, knowledge, and authority.” The notion of a unified, geometrical globe had an enormous impact and set the Western world on a violent path towards modernization and territorial domination. Although it is known that globes representing the Earth were made as far back as the 3rd century BC, the first complete globe – and also, coincidentally, the earliest surviving globe – was made in 1492. According to Cosgrove (2001, 114), “the Magellan circumnavigation prompted an explosion of globe making… Globes now became essential instruments for political strategy, academic study, and trade, if not practical navigation.” The discovery of the Americas, and the unification of the world on a small globe, inspired Pope Alexander VI to divide it up with vertical and horizontal lines, forming the graticule which is seen on all contemporary maps and globes. The intention was to divide the globe and establish which European sovereign power had control over what part. They geographically and mathematically divided the planet, rationalizing it and territorializing it. In describing this, Buck-Morss (2000, 32) says, “This ‘jus publicum Europaeum’ was the beginning of what Carl Schmitt calls “global linear thinking,” the first planetary political imaginary. The New World of the Americas, along with Africa and Asia, entered into this spatial order in accord with their relationship to the European center.” The globe, as it took form at the end of the 15th century was an image of planet Earth. It took the form of a modern spherical imaginary, which transformed the vastness of the world into a small globe, representing lands that exist to be dominated and territorialized.
Major technological and scientific developments during the Renaissance allowed for a deeper understanding and a clearer mental image of the form of the cosmos and the position of Earth within it. Hans Lipperhey, a Dutch spectacle maker, built the first telescope in 1608. In the years following, Galileo Galilei, and his acquaintance, Johannes Kepler, created improved telescope designs. Around that time, Kepler posthumously published Somnium (1635), a novel in which Kepler describes a dream of his where an Icelandic young man, Duracotus, and his elderly mother, Fiolxhilde, travel to the surface of the Moon, or “Levania.”[3] Kepler constructed Somnium upon his own radically new understanding of planetary motion – one which followed in the footsteps of Copernicus’ heliocentric solar system. As a result, Somnium is widely considered the first-ever work of science fiction. He supplements the narrative with a detailed scientific justification as well as a detailed description of what it would supposedly feel like to go to the Moon as a human. The mother and child travel to the Moon by means of a “wild spirit” or “daemon.” In speaking of one particularly friendly ‘daemon,’ Fiolxhilde tells her son, Duracotus (Kirkwood 1965, 98), “With his help I am transported in a moment of time to any foreign shore I choose, or, if the distance is too great for me, I learn as much by asking him as I would by going there myself.” In a footnote describing the ‘daemon,’ Kepler (ibid, 97) describes, “These spirits are the sciences, which reveal the causes of things. This allegory was suggested to me by the Greek word daimon, which is derived from daiein, that is, ‘to know,’ as if it were daemon.” Prior to Kepler’s theory on planetary movement, a rational understanding of celestial travel would have simply been unimaginable. Kepler justified his radical new discoveries on planetary motion by paralleling it with a fictional narrative which tapped into and activated the reader’s imagination. Highly significant is the fact that the travel takes place within Kepler’s dream – Cosgrove’s reverie. It adopts the standpoint that celestial travel has more to do with the mind than it does with the body. It therefore implies a form of disembodiment which was fundamental to the philosophies of knowledge which developed during the Renaissance.[4]
Euclidean, Non-Euclidean, and Quasi-Euclidean Space
Euclidean geometry defines paradigmatic architectonic spaces leading up to the 20th century and even today. The human-perceptual experience on the surface of the Earth, and the imagined experience of looking at the Earth from outer space or standing on the Moon are diametrically opposed. Everything that one perceives on the Earth’s surface is bound by a Euclidean understanding of space – the world looks and feels flat, and the architectural and urban forms that are built presuppose the world’s flatness. Even so, the sphere that is the Earth is non-Euclidean in form. Their distinction is drastic in a general trigonometric sense. Euclidean geometry relies on the axiom that straight lines exist. As a result, the sum of all the angles within a triangle equate to 180 degrees, without exception, ruling out the possibility of a triangle containing two right angles, because the two parallel lines would continue on forever, and never form a triangle. In non-Euclidean, or spherical geometry – which was developed significantly in the early 19th century by Carl Friedrich Gauss and Ferdinand Karl Schweikart – straight lines do not exist, and, on a sphere, two right angles could indeed join up to form a triangle (plate 1.1). In the case of the Earth, on a human-perceptual scale, the non-Euclidean angular disparities from the 180-degree axiom of Euclidean spaces become negligible for practical purposes. The daily perceptual experience of humans on the surface of the Earth is therefore a flat one, and as a result, architectural spaces are fundamentally constructed around the Euclidean geometrical model.
1.1 Euclidean triangle, right; non-Euclidean triangle, left. (Rohwedder 2007)
The transformation of global, spherical space onto a flat surface is a highly problematic one. Maps – on a localized, and even regional level – do not take into account the convex surface which they describe; the difference in accuracy is practically negligible relative to the benefits of the resulting geographical or cartographic description on a flat surface. Of course, there comes a point when the scale begins to drastically distort convex surfaces proportionally. Looking at the distortions involved in a full world map on a flat surface – a globe spread out onto a flat rectangle – Greenland might look as large as the entire continent of Africa, when geographically, it is substantially smaller in comparison. The spherical distortions involved in cartography are identical to those involved in the photographic process. Physical, ‘real’ space, when projected onto or represented on a flat surface suffers from the same distortions intrinsic to its transmutation.
1.2 Diagram describing spherical distortions when projecting on a flat plane. (Panofsky 2012, 32)
In Perspective as Symbolic Form, Erwin Panofsky describes ancient Greco-Roman understanding of perspective as irreconcilably opposed to that of modern perspectival construction on a flat image plane. This was because ancient understanding of perspective, in the words of Panofsky (2012, 35), “conceived of the field of vision as a sphere,” and rejected the possibility of spatial representations on flat surfaces as a result of the “unacceptable” distortions and abstractions inextricable from the process.[5] To be more precise, in Greco-Roman times, individual human optic experience was understood as hemispherical. A Greco-Roman understanding of optics did not allow for the representation of spaces on flat surfaces because they were unable to reconcile the distortions inherent to it (plate 1.2). Space between objects in Greco-Roman times was defined by angles as opposed to relative distances. Panofsky describes the history of spatial representations on flat surfaces and tracks the gradual discovery and implementation of a single vanishing point. He subsequently describes the different understandings of space which emerged – and how each epoch shaped a uniquely wholistic vision of the world. As Panofsky (2012, 36) continues, “Evidently, the contradiction was felt between Euclid’s ‘perspectiva naturalis’ or ‘communis,’ which sought simply to formulate mathematically the laws of natural vision (and so linked the apparent size to the visual angle), and the ‘perspectiva artificalis’ developed in the meantime, which on the contrary tried to provide a serviceable method for constructing images on two-dimensional surfaces.” The world as a globe was first mathematically divided into a graticular network – a patchwork of non-Euclidean “rectangular” surfaces – which was then distorted, flattened out, and rationalized onto a Cartesian gridwork of homogeneous, Euclidean rectangles (plate 1.3). An identical process was thus carried out, with perspectival representation, where vision – classically understood as a ‘sphere of vision’ – was organized and rationalized according to a Cartesian grid, with a unified vanishing point. The problematics of cartography, perspectival drawing – and subsequently photography and vision – are therefore inextricably linked. Their origins are traceable back to the Renaissance, when spherical form was first rationalized onto a flat surface, and the distortions involved inevitably became a part of the spherical imaginary and shaped modern visuality.
1.3 6x6 grid as described on a globe, left, and on a flat plane, right.
Buzz Aldrin in thinking back to his experience walking on the Moon (2014), said, “on Earth, we have no awareness of the horizon’s curvature… but the Moon is only 1/4th the size of the Earth. The Horizon was much closer than I was used to, and I even felt a bit disoriented.” Indeed, on Earth – on average, and at sea level – one could theoretically see approximately 4.66 kilometers into the distance before encountering the horizon, whereas on the Moon, one would only see about 2.43 kilometers. This difference in human-perceptual experience that Aldrin describes is fundamentally different from our otherwise earthly, Euclidean understanding of physical space. The drastic difference in the scale of the Moon, the fact that the curvature of the convex surface is no longer negligible, and its physical inaccessibility to the teams of scientists who were tasked with analyzing all the data brought back created the need for a reliable understanding of the image space within the photographs taken by the astronauts. NASA resolved this issue by turning to a method used principally for aerial, photographic cartography.[6] The method was the Réseau plate: a glass camera insert which burns a Cartesian gridwork of hairline crosses – fiducial markers – directly onto the photographic negative (plate 1.4). Its principal function is to account for spherical distortions native and relative to the lens used, as well as the non-Euclidean terrain beyond the image. It is most recognizable as the gridwork of crosses which are a constant presence in the photographs taken on the Lunar surface by NASA’s Apollo astronauts. According to NASA (2003), “the crosses were recorded on every exposed frame and provided a means of determining angular distances between objects in the field-of-view.” Multiple photographs of the same view could be used to construct an accurate understanding of the location and space between objects within the image – this process is also known as photogrammetry. It was NASA’s intention for the Réseauplate to grant them access to shift between a distorted, optic understanding of space to an angular, Greco-Roman understanding. In other words, it allowed for the space represented within the image plane to be converted from a Cartesian plane onto a graticular network and back. The Réseau plate, as used on a celestial body other than that of the Earth, is a product of a new system of space moulded by Cold War space exploration and nuclear-apocalyptic tensions in that it attempted to deconstruct the problematic established standard. It marks an intentional move towards the rationalization of photographic image space and is critical in understanding the increasingly liminal and ambiguous separation between image space and real space.
![1.4 Reseau Plate. (Schmitt [NASA], 1972)](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b574415f407b4d837f146bb/1565029427613-X5HVYOFTCSLHE74DFULT/Thesis+pic+6.png)
1.4 Reseau Plate. (Schmitt [NASA], 1972)
Panofsky describes the technical achievements culminating in the Renaissance, most importantly, the unification of a perspectival vanishing point. He writes (2012, 63), “…the Renaissance succeeded in mathematically fully rationalizing an image of space which had already earlier been aesthetically unified. This, as we have seen, involved extensive abstraction from the psychophysiological structure of space, and repudiation of the antique authorities. But, on the other hand, it was now possible to construct an unambiguous and consistent spatial structure of (within the limits of the ‘line of sight’) infinite extension, where bodies and the intervals of empty space between them were merged in a regular fashion into a corpus generaliter sumptum.” The unified vanishing point inperspectiva artificalis, which Panofsky describes,created the necessary conditions for the notion of an infinity. He reflects (2012, 65), “Thus, the great evolution from aggregate space to systematic space found its provisional conclusion… This entailed abandoning the idea of a cosmos with the middle of the earth as its absolute center and with the outermost celestial sphere as its absolute limit; the result was the concept of an infinity, an infinity not only prefigured in God, but indeed actually embodied in empirical reality…” The abstractions involved in the unification of a perspectival vanishing point – namely, the flattening of the convex surface of Earth, as well as the dismissal of optic distortions – created a Euclidean space beyond the image plane. Renaissance space as represented in image form subscribed to the axiomatic, straight-line reality established in Greco-Roman times. It did not – as photography does today – represent the curvature inherent to optic perception. In Greco-Roman times, straight lines were understood to exist in aggregate, Euclidean space, but they were understood to not exist in human, optic perception of that same space. They understood that the human eye perceived straight lines as curves when looking into aggregate space. Therein lies the irony of the unified perspectival vanishing point of the Renaissance: it was both a step towards and a step away from classical perspective. They disregarded ancient optics and ignored the curvature inherent to spatial representation on a flat surface. The effect of this abstraction is in no way trivial. What it creates is precisely what Panofsky describes: infinity embodied in empirical reality. Domestic space – and indeed most every setting which pertains to Euclidean geometrical forms – with all its parallel and perpendicular lines which subscribe to Euclidean rules, therefore embodies a notion of infinity. The inhabitant of the architectonic space is psychologically informed by Renaissance perspectival rules and, unaware of the inherent abstractions involved, relates them back to the “real space” which they inhabit. In other words, the Euclidean representation of space on a flat surface informed a new understanding of the physical space which surrounded the observer. It created a subtle disunion between psychological space and physical space by mapping Euclidean space onto optic space – what ancient authorities believed to be paradoxical. A hallway, for example, which extends out, could from then on be understood as extending on infinitely, as opposed to simply ending when it encounters the perpendicular wall at the end. For Panofsky, this has profound implications. The effect of this psychological consolidation of Euclidean space within the perspectival, “correct” image space, with Euclidean space as experienced directly through the eyes of the observer was a fundamental and groundbreaking shift in the observer. He says (2012, 72), “Perspective, finally, opens art to the realm of the psychological… Perspective, in transforming the ousia (reality) into the phainomenon (appearance), seems to reduce the divine to a mere subject matter for human consciousness; but for that very reason, conversely, it expands human consciousness into a vessel for the divine.” The Reseau plate, and its rationalization of image space in the wake of the Cold War, is distinct from the rationalization which Panofsky describes. Panofsky’s is a rationalization which constructs a visual representation of physical space upon a blank and flat surface, whereas the rationalization of the Reseau plate is one which starts with a photographic representation of a real space, provides the means to reverse-engineer it, and to construct an empirical understanding of it. In this sense, the Reseau plate is an apparatus which aspires to consolidate Euclid’s perspectiva naturalis with perspectiva artificalis of the Renaissance. It exposes a desire to deconstruct the Renaissance model of vision and to move towards an empirical understanding of an geometrically – and therefore perspectivally – unfamiliar and inaccessible space.
–
On December 7th, 1972, one of the most enduring photographs of Earth was taken: Photograph AS17-148-22727, most recognizably known as The Blue Marble. It was taken by astronaut Harrison Schmitt during the Apollo 17 mission to the Moon. Although it was not the first photograph of the whole of Earth’s illuminated face, The Blue Marble became the most iconic. It coincided with a surge in environmental activism and became a symbol for the movement, showing Earth in all its isolation and vulnerability. Its use as a symbol for fragility and finitude illuminates some of the fundamental changes happening in the decades prior. The spherical imaginary went from one which viewed the Earth as a limitless resource to a finite and self-contained system becoming directly affected by the way humanity treated it. Although The Blue Marble has remained one of the most iconic and widely distributed photographs in history, it piggy-backed on the proliferation of earlier photographs of Earth, as well as the concept of “Spaceship Earth,” coined by American architect Buckminster Fuller in the 1960s. Fuller had a uniquely positivistic attitude for the time, which was greatly inspired by the grave, unprecedented threats which humanity was encountering at the time. He said (Fuller 2019), “I’ve often heard people say: ‘I wonder what it would feel like to be on board a spaceship,’ and the answer is very simple. What does it feel like? That’s all we have ever experienced. We are all astronauts on a little spaceship called Earth.”
Fuller created a map in the 1940s which attempted to resolve the exceptional distortions found on a classical world map. Instead of stretching a spherical surface out onto a rectangular plane, Fuller looked for the most efficient way to exhibit the land masses on a flat surface with the least amount of distortion. This became known as the Dymaxion Map, and, significantly, it became the first map to be patented in the United States – the first map of the New World (plate 1.5). In Fuller’s words, “the Dymaxion Map reveals a One-World Island in a One-World Ocean.” He aimed to establish an understanding the world as a self-contained and independent system of relationships. Originally released as a photographic essay in Life Magazine in 1943, it coincided with the beginning of the Space Age. In pursuit of consolidating the non-Euclidean, spherical form of the Earth with the human-perceptual experience – a Euclidean understanding of reality – Fuller simplified the spherical form of the Earth into a variety of mostly homogeneous triangles unifying all worldly land mass onto a flat surface with the least amount of spherical distortions.
1.5 Dymaxion Map. (Fuller, 1943)
Fuller’s map sheds light on the new spherical imaginary which formed in Cold War America. When the dymaxion map is folded back into the approximate shape of a sphere, it perhaps reveals what the spherical imaginary of the Space Age looked like (plate 1.6). Euclidean and non-Euclidean surfaces blend together in the Space Age to create what I will refer to as quasi-Euclidean space.[7]
![1.6 Buckminster Fuller holds a 3-D version of his Dymaxion Map. (Fuller [Life], 1943)](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b574415f407b4d837f146bb/1565029704422-NXN74ML1W8S62L4GQZQS/Thesis+pic+8.png)
1.6 Buckminster Fuller holds a 3-D version of his Dymaxion Map. (Fuller [Life], 1943)
Television and the Camera Obscura
The Cold War was defined by the contrast between the everyday lives of average American civilians, and the mammoth technological advancements taking place: namely, space exploration and harnessing nuclear power. But what was the catalyst in creating this contrast? What created and perpetuated this contrast which called for the consolidation of Euclidean and non-Euclidean space? Evidence points to the introduction and popularization of the television, as it became the window through which Cold War America perceived and experienced the outer world – images from beyond the surface of the Earth. The introduction of the television marks a radical alteration of domestic spaces within the USA. In the decades following World War II, televisions went from being inaccessibly expensive to ubiquitous and ever present. To put this into perspective, in 1949 about 9% of households had a television set – that amounts to less than one million households. That number rose to 44 million by 1969, where 90% of households had at least one television set. As a result of its widespread distribution and several technological advancements, live-broadcast news and entertainment could reach a large part of the American public in an instant: it became the window through which the population would receive information of the world beyond the domestic spaces which they inhabited, whether it be images of the Korean War, Kennedy giving a speech in Berlin, or Neil Armstrong landing on the Moon – an event which was viewed live by an estimated 600 million people worldwide (plate 1.7). As a result of its colossal and pervasive reach, it would have a profound influence on the post-war American imaginary. In the paragraphs which follow, I will take a closer look at the formal aspects of the television alongside the camera obscura – more specifically, the philosophical discourses surrounding its development during the Renaissance – and how it was used, or rather abused, to gain control over American interiority, or psychological space.
1.7 A typical home television set in post-war USA (Getty Images, 1962)
Though it may not be immediately obvious, the technology behind the television screen is wholly different to that of the cinema. Instead of being based on a photographic index, the television image is based on electronic signals captured with a cathode-ray tube. Even though it was then possible to record electronic images on magnetic tape, the image quality of recorded video could not match that of live-broadcast television. As a result, television remained a live-broadcast medium as opposed to a pre-recorded one. Another limitation encountered by early television distribution was a geographical one: the images were distributed by means of tall antenna-towers, but since the television waves would only travel in straight lines, the curvature of the Earth severely restricted the distance that they could travel. The major breakthrough which solved this problem was the development and launch of the Telstar satellite in 1962. Television signals would be directed at the satellite, which would then reflect the signals back down to Earth. Because of its much higher vantage point, it could cover the entirety of the USA. This greatly increased potential viewership, as live-broadcast television could then be delivered directly from television cameras to just about every American home.
As stated earlier, televised visual information, is composed of electromagnetic waves. It is invisible to the human eye as a result of it being outside the spectrum of visible light; otherwise, the only difference between perceivable light and television waves is the wavelength. The image broadcast for the television, in other words, never becomes solid in state; it remains in wave form, and travels from the camera to the television set without stopping or taking physical form. It is therefore important to consider that television was a derivative neither of photography, nor cinema. In order to better understand its origins and its ontology, it is helpful to look back to the developments and philosophies which orbited the camera obscura during the Renaissance.
1.8 A 17thcentury illustration of a camera obscura
The camera obscura is an architectural enclosure sealed off from the outer world. No light is permitted to enter, with the exception of a small hole in one wall (plate 1.8). On the wall opposite that hole, there is a flat surface – a white cloth, perhaps. Upon that surface is projected an inverted image of the space immediately outside the camera. Through the lens of the camera obscura, optical signals from the external physical space converge into a single intersection-point, and subsequently expand onto a flat surface in image form. Physical reality transmutes and detaches from its referent – though, temporally, the image and its referent remain inextricably linked, separated merely by the time it takes light to travel from the object to the projection plane. The first clear description of a camera obscura was written by Leonardo Da Vinci, who in his Codex Atlanticus (Vaquero & Vazquez 2009, 104) describes, “If the facade of a building, or a place, or a landscape is illuminated by the sun and a small hole is drilled in the wall of a room in a building facing this, which is not directly lighted by the sun, then all objects illuminated by the sun will send their images through this aperture and will appear, upside down, on the wall facing the hole. “ As a result of technological developments relating to lens grinding, the camera obscura came to prominence in the late 16th century – popularized by Giambattista della Porta. Even so, it would not be until 1604 that the term “camera obscura” – a term coined by Kepler in his Ad Vitellionem paralipomena quibus astronomiae pars optica traditur(1604) – would be used for the first time. It is generally assumed that the camera obscura was principally used as an aid to artistic production, but that assumption is largely incorrect. Although it was certainly used as a drawing aid by some, the camera obscura was fundamentally an experiment in understanding human vision, subsequently serving as a model upon which to theorize the functions of human knowledge. In his Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (1990), Jonathan Crary tracks the reorganization of knowledge, and the fundamental and radical shifts that happened between the Renaissance and the early 19th century. He focuses on philosophies of vision, and how the camera obscura found itself at the core of those discourses. He says (1990, 27),“During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the camera obscura was without question the most widely used model for explaining human vision and for representing the relation of a perceiver and the position of a knowing subject to an external world.” He argues (1990, 39) that the camera obscura is inseparable from a metaphysic of interiority, whereby, “It impels a kind of askesis,or withdrawal from the world… [a] decisive function of the camera was to sunder the act of seeing from the physical body of the observer, to decorporealize vision.” He describes the camera obscura as an architectural space surrounding a free-floating spectator – a “supplementary presence”: an interiorized and disembodiedsubject (plate 1.9). John Locke, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), describes the camera obscura and how it serves as an analogy for understanding how the human mind works, “External and internal sensations are the only passages that I can find of knowledge to the understanding. These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into this dark room. For, methinks, the understanding is not much unlike a closet wholly shut from light, with only some little opening left… to let in external visible resemblances, or some idea of things without’ would the pictures coming into such a dark room but stay there and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion it would very much resemble the understanding of a man.” Crary links Locke’s philosophy to that of Descartes, saying (1990, 42), “[Descartes] goes on to challenge the notion that one knows the world by means of eyesight: ‘It is possible that I do not even have eyes with which to see anything.’ For Descartes, one knows the world ‘uniquely by perception of the mind,’ and the secure positioning of the self within an empty interior space is a precondition for knowing the outer world.”
1.9 An internalized and disembodied subject. (Descartes, 1637)
By the end of the 17th century, the camera obscura was understood as a psycho-domestic space which housed the disembodied subject, who would then experience the world indirectly by means of the projected image. As Crary describes (1990, 46), “The exterior world is known not by direct sensory examination but through a mental survey of its ‘clear and distinct’ representation within the room.” The image transmitted for the television, just like the camera obscura, is physically detached from but temporally connected to its referent. In both cases, the image travels exclusively in waveform, but the television is able to carry it further away from its referent, multiply it and distribute it to more than one projection plane. The post-war American subject was thus also disembodied – but by the television, which constructed an understanding of the world unlinked to direct perception through a natural eye. The post-war domestic space is therefore equatable to the psycho-domestic space of the camera obscura – the space of the interior of the mind. The television initially produced a new understanding of interiority and exteriority in line with the philosophies of the Renaissance: it was a direct yet disassociated link to the external world. Unfortunately, this theoretical, disassociated link to an external world would quickly dissolve as a result of the increasingly extreme nuclear-apocalyptic tensions of the Cold War.
Nuclear Apocalyptic
In 1953, a typical rural neighborhood area was built on a desolate plane in Nevada. Within this neighborhood, a variety of archetypal American homes were erected: houses of various sizes, made of wood, concrete, brick. Cars were also placed strategically around the town. Dubbed “Doom Town” by the people involved in the construction, the homes were fully furnished, and lifelike mannequins were placed inside to silently await the detonation of a nearby nuclear bomb (plate 2.1). These houses were documented in Operation Doorstep (1953),a 10-minute film made by the Federal Civil Defense Administration (CDA) intending to inform the public of the implications of domestic nuclear war. The narrator introduces the film by saying, “For the first time in our history, American homes will be exposed to atomic blast.” After a thorough description of the interior spaces inhabited by the mannequins, the home is shown from the outside, and then there is a flash – the detonation of the bomb – followed by a shock wave which violently shatters and disintegrates the home (plate 2.2). Following the blast, the footage of the house exploding is played back and described frame by frame, ending with, “Now the blast wave gets inside and the house, under tremendous pressure, blows apart. Remember: what you have seen here in detail happened in just two and one third second.” The film then inspects the interior spaces and the mannequins after the blast. The houses nearest the blast are devastated; interior spaces have been violently exteriorized and fragmented. With this, the narrator says, “In the cold light of dawn, television cameras on news knob make the threat of the mushroom cloud a dark reality at homes across the nation… Will you, like a mannequin, just sit and wait?”
2.1 A mannequin family awaits the blast of a nearby nuclear bomb. (Bettmann Archive, 1953)
2.2 Film still from Operation Doorstep.(CDA, 1953)
The nuclear annihilation narrative that the CDA produced was intended to push people to invest in building personal fall-out shelters. Governmental support of the CDA was increased drastically in the 1950s, and culminated in 1957, when the Soviet Union tested the first Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, which reduced possible warning times to mere minutes and rendered the emergency protocols of the time – mass evacuation – obsolete. To make matters worse, the worst threat of nuclear warfare was not the fireball, or even the shock wave. It was radioactive fallout, which would permeate the air, and travel potentially thousands of kilometers. This changed the stakes entirely. One would not merely have to survive the blast; they would also have to take shelter from invisible, radioactive, lethal air. Humanity had developed the power to wipe itself out, and it was dangerously close to doing just that. This marked the permeation of all domestic space, internal and external, both psychologically and potentially physically. Operation Doorstep strongly contributed to the violent psychological shattering of the “typical” American home with the construction of a narrative which did not distinguish between representational spaces built for the atomic tests, inhabited by mannequins, and real homes inhabited by real people.
The idea of radioactive fallout, following the CDA’s push for the public to have a better understanding of it, was subsequently picked up and expanded immensely by a subgenre of literature and cinema which became known as the nuclear apocalyptic. The anxieties surrounding the looming “all-out nuclear war” both informed and perpetuated the nuclear apocalyptic, inspiring a wide range of literary and cinematic. These began with the initial public outrage expressed by Bertrand Russell and subsequently ranged from Marvel comics – incorporating characters like the Incredible Hulk and Spiderman, who received their superpowers as a result of radioactive fallout – to the novels of Isaac Asimov. Kenneth Rose, in his book One Nation Underground (2001, 40) says, “Typically, a nuclear apocalyptic begins with a description of a town or city, and the ordinary daily activities of its residents. The mundane quality of such activities will stand in sharp contrast to – and help dramatize – what follows… The town is now attacked by nuclear weapons, and there are vivid descriptions of the devastation wrought on the city’s physical features as the fierce blast and heat combust buildings and topple skyscrapers…” Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Bomb (1964)is an incredibly powerful nuclear apocalyptic narrative, built around the accidental launch of an all-out nuclear attack against the USSR by a rogue military officer. As the film develops, it is revealed that even if one bomb were to be dropped, the Soviets had implemented what they called the “doomsday machine,” which would automatically launch a full nuclear counter attack on the USA. It was, and still remains, a deeply disconcerting political satire or dark comedy. Kubrick’s narrative created a plausible future reality, and still today sheds a light on the anxieties which pervaded Cold War America. It was a time in which ambiguity, contingency and the resulting fear of total annihilation reigned over the average civilian. Some cases evidence the immense effect which Dr. Strangelove had on the general public, and even real political spaces. Sir Ken Adam, who designed the film sets for Dr. Strangelove, recounted in an interview, “When Ronald Reagan became president of the United States, he asked the chief of staff to show him the war room…” only to find out that such a space did not exist (plate 2.3). Adam continues, “He believed it was in the Pentagon.” In speaking of the process of designing the war room, Adam (2016) describes that, “The design of the war room was something that I purely invented because I didn’t have any real reference.” The deeply rooted intermingling of fact and fiction as a result of the nuclear apocalyptic are clear in this example: if even the president-elect of the United States thought the “war room” of a political satire was real, what of the average spectator? The effect of the ‘war room’ on the public imaginary eventually made it into real politics, as evidenced by the 2009 G20 summit in Pennsylvania, which took place around a table and within a room strikingly similar to the set designed by Adam (plate 2.4). This simple example of a round table embodying the nuclear apocalyptic illuminates what would continue to happen on a massive scale in perpetuity. In the decade leading up to, and the decades following, it would become increasingly difficult to extract truth from various forms of media, non-fiction and fiction alike. It was equally likely to receive content of more perceived truth value from explicitly fictional works than the state supported newsreels and informational pamphlets.
2.3 Ken Adam’s War Room Design. (Kubrick, 1964)
2.4 G20 Summit, Pennsylvania. (Globe, 2009)
The nuclear apocalyptic shaped a new understanding of physical space which was wholly informed by image space. Architectonic spaces on the Earth’s surface began to evolve into representational spaces inextricably linked to a looming nuclear apocalypse. Another film which illuminates the effects of this ambiguity is the screen version of Nevil Shute’s On the Beach (1959). The book was published in 1957, and the film was made in 1959 with a cast full of the most recognizable film stars of the time, including Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire and Anthony Perkins. The basic plot, unlike that of the typical nuclear apocalyptic that Rose describes, begins in the aftermath of an all-out nuclear war, where the entirety of the Northern Hemisphere has been devastated. Instead of showing the mass death of millions of people, the film’s protagonists are on a military base in Australia, where nuclear war did not occur. They believe they are the last people on the planet to remain alive, and they slowly wait as the global wind currents carry the radioactive fallout to them. The general public receive “suicide pills” from the Australian government in order to not have to die as a result of radiation sickness. Two of the protagonists are given the mission to travel to San Francisco in an American nuclear submarine under Australian control after receiving an incomprehensible Morse code signal from the city. A lack of visual confirmation of the devastation of the rest of the world and the theoretical, invisible approach of their own imminent death allegedly left audiences weeping in the intermission. In the film, all the domestic, and public spaces remained the same, but they were profoundly altered because of the inescapable and invisible annihilation of humanity.
Dr. Strangelove exploited and showed the godlike nuclear capability of the US and the USSR alongside the utterly disgraceful and futile people in control. A powerful sequence occurs when the US military invade the military base gone rogue. The soldiers within the base are sealed off from the outer world and told that the entire USA is under attack, and therefore anybody attempting to enter into the base must be Soviet soldiers. The American soldiers on the other side are led to believe that the soldiers in the base are essentially terrorists. Both sides suffer from misinformation, and both believe they are fighting for the prosperity of the USA. The nuclear apocalypse in Dr. Strangelove is commenced by misunderstanding, making clear to all audience members that their lives are contingent on irrational decisions. On the Beach is based on the same premise – although it is not explicitly stated, it is implied that the all-out nuclear war may have started as a result of a misunderstanding. This illuminates the general anxiety that the possibility of war is not based on reason, but rather petty misunderstanding.
A Mass Move Underground
![2.5 Cylindrical metal fallout shelter. (CBS [Associated Press], 1962)](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b574415f407b4d837f146bb/1565032787776-IIEB9GUBO5YY2UN3MUC0/image-asset.png)
2.5 Cylindrical metal fallout shelter. (CBS [Associated Press], 1962)
Although on the most part physical spaces did not change according to the nuclear apocalyptic, there are some instances in which new architectonic spaces were actually built (plate 2.5). These are essential to address in order to understand the psychological form taken by unchanged spaces. The nuclear apocalyptic in fiction grew into a colossal movement, and in its surge, it bolstered a short-lived market for domestic fallout shelters. Hundreds of shelter firms appeared, selling shelter-building services. Companies which manufactured bricks sold shelters made of brick; the same went for companies which manufactured cement, swimming pools, and even timber. According to Rose (2001, 80), “Fear of nuclear war was certainly on many people’s minds… In a Prince Georges County shopping center outside Washington, D.C., shoppers were treated to a recording of air raid sirens, exploding bombs, and an anguished male voice that cried out, ‘My wife, my children…’” The nuclear apocalyptic called for a mass move underground. All space surrounding the civilian population had been permeated – solidified, even – with the proliferation of fallout anxiety. Fallout shelters were not explicitly designed to withstand nuclear blast. It was generally understood that if one were anywhere near a nuclear blast, there was almost no hope for survival; there would be no warning time to get to the shelter. Fallout meant that if a nuclear bomb were to go off at a distance, even far enough that the blast was not heard or seen, one would still die from radiation poisoning. Therefore, if one did not have a fallout shelter, there would be nowhere to go. In the event of a nuclear war, the domestic space would become incapable of separating exterior and interior: deadly radioactivity would penetrate the walls with ease and bring death to the once safe domestic interior. The supposed solution to this, endorsed by the US government, was to build a personal underground fallout shelter capable of keeping the vast majority of radiation from reaching the body and causing death from radiation sickness.
The narrative was pervasive and transmedial, but the prospect of actually building a personal fallout shelter was highly problematic. It was expensive to build one, so it was available only to upper and upper-middle class people living in suburbs or in rural areas. People who did decide to make one had to deal with ethical questions involving who would have access to their shelter if nuclear war were to come, and to what extent they would morally be prepared to go to protect their families. It was common for families building shelters to do so in secret, and to mount machine guns at the door of the shelter to protect themselves from their neighbors. Of course, financial constraints, ethical dilemmas, and their likely futility kept a vast majority of people from building shelters. In fact, according to one study, only 0.4% of the population were taking measures to protect themselves against nuclear war. Ironically (Rose 2001, 79), “when asked in 1961, ‘Suppose you had to make the decision between fighting an all-out nuclear war or living under communist rule – how would you decide?’ 81 percent of Americans opted for nuclear war…” This ‘Better Dead than Red’ sentiment was created and perpetuated by the Nuclear Apocalyptic, which made it a virtual impossibility to avoid being constantly bombarded with images of the threat of communist rule and total annihilation. For the majority of civilians in the USA, nuclear war remained a theoretical likelihood of the near future for which they had no protection; it would be a ‘fact’ of life to be faced on a daily basis.
The physical absence of fallout shelters, the massive discourse surrounding their potential existence and the ideal form that they would take, generated a mental image of what a ‘safe’ domestic space should be. Instead of a wooden house with windows, a safe space in the nuclear age would be a cement house with no windows, ideally underground with a large stockpile of supplies, just in case. There was therefore a massive disunion between the physical form of the domestic space, which had remained largely unchanged for centuries, and the psychological form of the domestic space, which was molded by the theoretical dangers of the nuclear age. The image of the fallout shelter would remain in the imagination of the general public, who were unable to build one in their physical reality. This disunion therefore created a new psychophysiological space, defined by a total lack of safety and certainty: the physical reality in which the American civilian lived was held up by a thread from then on.
The personal fallout shelter initiative was practically abandoned in favor of public fallout shelters. Even so, just like personal fallout shelters, public fallout shelters were not commonly built. Perhaps the most notable of these public shelters was the Abo Elementary School and Fallout Shelter in Artesia, New Mexico. It was a school entirely built underground, which doubled as a community fallout shelter, capable of housing 2,160 people in the event of a nuclear war. Public schools were deemed the best candidates for the creation of community fallout shelters, but it brought about fierce debate as the different visions of what a child needs in order to learn clashed. Even so, one teacher at Abo Elementary, Gertrude McCaw, described students as (Rose 2001, 138), “less rambunctious. You spend more time teaching and less time disciplining.” A school without windows was paramount to its usability as a fallout shelter, but the archetypal school up until that point was built around large windows which allowed natural light to illuminate everything, and provided a natural, healthy learning environment. In the event of a nuclear explosion, the classical school model would not only be unsafe, it would likely be the worst place to be, as the large windows would certainly shatter, catching the schoolchildren at their most vulnerable.
Abo Elementary was an extreme case in that it was actually built underground. It was not as uncommon to encounter a school without windows. It was an easy conversion process, and some educational systems subscribed to the theory that windowless schools produced a better student. In schools with and without windows alike, institutional measures were put in place which perpetuated the ambiguity, such as the “duck and cover” drills in schools. Rose (2001, 131) says, “The ‘duck and cover’ school drills, in which students crawled under their desks and assumed the “atomic clutch” position with hands to the back of the neck, were often run without students knowing whether this was an exercise or an actual atomic attack…” Evidence of a fundamentally altered psyche took form in the experience of the schoolchildren. Performative practices such as the “duck and cover” drill ingrained in the psyche the nuclear apocalyptic and the domestic presence of an invisible and inaccessible “other”. It, as we have established, it was a society informed and produced by the television. The television informed the inhabitants that their house could be destroyed in ‘two and one third second’ by those same inaccessible entities, making them psychologically present, and therefore present in their physical spatial practice, and their vision of the world. Rose (2001, 140) describes the disconcerting account of a schoolteacher: In a 1961 Newsweek article on the effect of nuclear survival discussions on children, an art teacher named Nancy Lawson estimated that half of her class was preoccupied with nuclear fallout. Displaying a batch of student watercolors with “brilliantly colored versions of mushroom clouds, flaming cities, running children, and fallout-flaked skyscrapers,” Lawson observed that ‘a child just naturally uses brilliant colors in painting. But we are having an awful lot of trouble getting them to paint a clear sky.’” The nuclear apocalyptic, which became inseparable from every space, transformed the spatial practice within the USA. The nuclear apocalyptic was not to be experienced; it was to be performed. The narrative took hold, controlling and disciplining the body, much like the schoolteacher at Abo Elementary described. The debate around the physical form that schools should take made both possibilities representational spaces. In a school without windows, a student would be constantly aware of the reason why there were no windows. A student in a school with windows would constantly be aware of the dangers those windows represented – a fear augmented and perpetuated by the “duck and cover” routines (plate 2.6). An entire generation of schoolchildren was taught how to perform the nuclear apocalyptic, and in the performance, the body produced nuclear apocalyptic psychophysiological spaces of every space, both physically changed and unchanged.
2.6 “Duck and cover” test. (Von Sydow, 2014)
Cities were being re-imagined too, although because of the practical impossibility no city was actually restructured to account for nuclear war. Physicist Ralph Lapp, in his book, Must We Hide? (1949), came up with three alternative city structures which could plausibly reduce the disastrous effects of a nuclear attack on a city: the “satellite” city, the “doughnut” city, and the “rodlike” city. The “satellite” city is composed of a business district at the center, with an airport district, a residential district, and an industrial district on its perimeter. In the “doughnut” city model, the airport would form the center of the city. The business area would form a cluster some distance away from the airport, and the industrial and residential areas would form a ring around the whole. The “rodlike” city is composed of an elongated business district, with elongated residential and industrial areas forming parallel to it. Another design for a nuclear-proof city was proposed by Norbert Wiener, an American philosopher and mathematician at MIT in 1950 (plate 2.7)[8]. He proposed what he called “life belts,” to be constructed in every city. Essentially, the design involved the building of large roads and railroad tracks which radiate out of the center of the city, forming what would look like giant spokes (Wiener 1950, 77-86). In addition to this, there would be a large ring road circulating the city some ways out. Within the spaces on the outer city demarcated by the spokes and the circular road there would be large parklands ready to be converted into mass tent cities to house refugees. In those areas there would also be hospitals, warehouses filled with supplies, and power stations. Wiener’s city, when observed from an aerial viewpoint, looks like an enormous crater. The theoretical form itself thus embedded within it an urban landscape permeated with the fear and paranoia which pervaded the American psyche of the time. In designing these alternative cities, they began to call into question the basic modes of human inhabitation which had dominated in centuries past.
![2.7 Wiener’s design for a “nuclear proof city.” (Wiener [Life], 1950)](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b574415f407b4d837f146bb/1565033031859-ODXU89HYJ0ET3EBQ1DFX/Thesis+pic+18.png)
2.7 Wiener’s design for a “nuclear proof city.” (Wiener [Life], 1950)
As we have seen, the nuclear apocalyptic began with philosophers speaking up in the aftermath of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and became a paradigm shift in the structure of psychophysiological space as it grew to consume the psychological form of everything from the domestic interior to entire cities. The theoretical urban structures outlined by Wiener and Lapp gave and give a visual representation of what cities “safe” from, or at the very least prepared for, nuclear attack would look like. Theoretical ideas and fictional narratives were blended with real events, and together they were mapped out onto real spaces. Their contrast created an unreliable psychophysiological space: a quasi-Euclidean space.
Interiority, Drained
The Cold War was defined by a domination of virtual space and the resulting contingency inflicted on every civilian in America. The most intrusive example remains Operation Doorstep as a result of its ubiquitous access to the domestic space. The television provided a way for nuclear-apocalyptic filmic space to seep into and become indistinguishable from real space. In essence, “Doom Towns” were film sets which for the individual civilian became the psychophysiological architectonics of domestic space. The CDA, and its Doom Towns, were the most intimate intrusion into the American psyche as a result of their privileged access within domestic space. The awestriking footage flooded the domestic spaces of millions of American homes, dissolving any sense of safety that they might have previously had. Since the vast majority of Americans did not have any protection from an atomic blast or the subsequent fallout that could come at any moment in time the space surrounding them was aesthetically and physically unchanged, but psychologically it was profoundly and fundamentally changed by the representational spaces beyond the increasingly contingent and liminal image plane. “Doom Towns” functioned as a mirror-image of the average domestic space: a window to the potential near future where nuclear war had already broken out. American families watched from within their living rooms as a domestic space not too dissimilar to the one they themselves were inhabiting was exposed to an atomic blast. It resulted in a prophetic, or rather contingent, uncanny and ultimately quasi-Euclidean domestic space. Footage of the “Doom Town” therefore usurped the American psychophysiological domestic space by means of destroying its mirror-image contained within the television screen.
2.8 Interior spaces after the detonation in Operation Doorstep. (Bettmann Archive, 1953)
The American domestic interior space took a quasi-Euclidean psychophysiological form: the devastated and exteriorized house in Operation Doorstep made up the psychological, and the “real” domestic space made up the physical. The inhabitant of the American home was no longer a passive “supplementary presence,” no longer internalized or disembodied (plate 2.8). Crary describes the transition away from and obsolescence of the camera obscura model of knowledge and perception in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and the transition to a production of reality without an inherent link to a referent. In terms of the television, what began as a theoretical direct link to exterior ‘reality’ became increasingly hostile and ambiguous yet remained utterly convincing. In speaking of the 18th and 19th century, he describes (1992, 98) a clear transition, where “observation is increasingly tied to the body,” and “temporality and vision become inseparable.” The primary proof for this “subjective observation,” and the dissolution of the camera obscura model, is Goethe’s analysis of the optic afterimage – produced when looking at a light, and then looking away, but still seeing a shadow or a color imprint. Crary (1992, 73) explains Goethe’s point of view by saying, “subjective observation is not the inspection of an inner space or theater of representations. Instead, observation is increasingly exteriorized; the viewing body and its objects begin to constitute a single field on which inside and outside are confounded.” The nuclear apocalyptic supplemented the nuclear tensions and the space race, creating a deeply rooted disunion in the inhabited psychophysiological spaces – an ambiguous and untrustworthy reality. The permeation of domestic space and its inversion is a progression of the philosophical developments which occurred in the early 19th century. In Crary’s words (1992, 92), “The issue was not just how does one know what is real, but that new forms of the real were being fabricated, and a new truth about the capacities of a human subject was being articulated in these terms.” Cold War USA encountered an invention which at first took the form of the camera obscura, allowing the domestic inhabitant to become a disembodied and therefore “safe” observer of the outer world, but it quickly mutated into a means of control. The image which at one point might have been discernable as a separate, psychological space dissolves into the physical. The architectonic interior space becomes indifferentiable from exterior space and the spaces represented within the screen – they all melt into a unified surface. The subject, or body, is not exempt from this dissolution: it too is reduced to mere surface. Crary (1992, 92) states, “Interiority is drained of any meaning that it had for a classical observer, or for the model of the camera obscura, and all sensory experience occurs on a single immanent plane.”
In Cold War America, interiority was indeed drained and inverted as a result of the television’s privileged access to the psyche. Everything, including the body, was externalized and flattened out – image space fused with real space, as real and unchanged architectonic space became contaminated with the nuclear apocalyptic. The Cold War body in the USA became the mannequin in Operation Doorstep as they were emptied out and made into a surface. All space – “real” and virtual – became psychological. The spatial system which evolved out of the Nuclear Age is one in which all separations between interiority and exteriority dissolved. The psychological was “emptied out” and mapped out onto the physical. The nuclear age called for an impossible mass move underground, as its ambiguity violently turned everything into surface. Life went on with the underlying anxiety that the governmental systems in place were likely to set in motion the total annihilation of humanity. The deep ambiguity disseminated by the nuclear apocalyptic informed a new spatial system which constructed a world with a likely but uncertain expiration date.
2001: A Space Odyssey: The Loss of Infinity
Having established the deeply rooted anxieties of the space age from an Earthly perspective, I turn to the extraterrestrial architectonic spaces represented within 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Annette Michelson, in speaking of 2001 in Bodies in Space: Films as “Carnal Knowledge” (1969, 6) describes it as, “a voyage of discovery, a progress towards disembodiment, [it] explores, through a multi-level tactics of displacement… the structural potentialities of haptic disorientation as agent of cognition.”I am most interested in the centrifugal space stations based on the designs of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, as a tool for displacement. The design, dating back to 1880, involved a large cylindrical form which would rotate, creating a centrifugal force capable of simulating Earth’s gravity. The first rotating space station to come up in the film, Space Station V(plate 3.1), is also the largest, housing among other things the Hilton. Being exceptionally large, itcurves upward gradually, and an artificial horizon forms as the floor meets the ceiling (plate 3.2). The architectural enclosure does not imply a Euclidean continuation of space, or a vanishing point. It is a self-contained space – a wholly artificial world. It is a space which conforms to non-Euclidean or elliptical geometry. Unlike the perspectival rules established during the Renaissance, a vanishing point does not exist, and the concave architectural forms thereforeimply a finite space. It is not non-Euclidean in the Earthly sense either, as it is a concave surface as opposed to a convex one. It is an inversion and miniaturization of the Earth’s curvature, making its self-contained form immediately evident to the inhabitant as well as to the spectators of the filmic image. In deciding to activate Tsiolkovsky’s designs, Kubrick distills the anxieties of the space age in a minimal and elegant way: a subtle upward curve creating an artificial and inverted horizon.
3.1 Space Station V. (Kubrick, 1968)
The subtle upward curve and resulting artificial horizon represented in Space Station V reveals a new cinematic landscape – one which consolidates Euclidean with non-Euclidean Space. Instead of transmuting a spherical form onto a flat surface – like Fuller’s dymaxion map – Euclidean space transforms into a non-Euclidean form. If perspectival advances in the Renaissance provided the imagination with the potential of conceptualizing infinity, the Atomic Age dissolved a sense of infinity by means of its own artistic representations of space and reduced it to a self-conscious finity. The inverted artificial horizon of Space Station V thus embodies the loss of infinity, evidencing the reshaping of psychophysiological space in Cold War America as it mapped architectural forms void of infinity onto the psyche of its spectators, and subsequently – and reciprocally – the Euclidean spaces which they inhabited.
3.2 Interior of the Hilton hotel aboard Space Station V (Kubrick, 1968)
Kubrick worked closely with NASA to develop the most plausible and realistic sets, technologies, and narratives. The theoretical technologies were wholly grounded in scientific possibilities which had not yet become physical realities. Working with privileged access to NASA, and with a monumental budget, Kubrick brought to virtual life many theoretical technologies, constructing a plausible future.
Experimentation in perspectival form designed for the cinematic image can be traced back to the early 20thcentury, when film productions were experimenting more freely with the architectural form that the sets took. This exploration started with the German Expressionists, who built elaborate film sets that played with perspectival rules in dialogue with the spherical distortions of the lens and the abstractions inherent to their representation on a flat screen. They built sets which broke with photographic representation of real spaces conforming to the rules of Euclidean geometry. Herman G. Scheffauer, a German-American architect and poet, in speaking of these developments (1925, 288), states, “Space – hitherto considered and treated as something dead and static, a mere inert screen or frame, often of no more significance than the painted balustrade-background at the village photographer’s – has been smitten into life, into movement and conscious expression. A fourth dimension has begun to evolve out of this photographic cosmos.” Along the same lines, architect Robert Mallet-Stevens (1920, 77) says: “… it is undeniable that cinema has a marked influence on modern architecture; in turn, modern architecture brings its artistic side to the cinema…. Modern architecture not only serves the cinematographic set [décor], but imprints its stamp on the staging [mise-en-scene], it breaks out of its frame; architecture ‘plays.’” Mallet-Stevens alludes to a kind of formless architecture which exists beyond the image plane. Cinema and modern architecture – both “spatial arts,” – are therefore closely bound, having a profound influence on each other. The architectural forms of the satellites within 2001 employthis reciprocally indexical relationship. They are not only formless within the diegetic world of the film: they “markedly” influence the psychophysiological spaces of the world outside. The film set is free to take any form, and cinema, unlike theater, is physically able not only to work with architectural forms which distort perspective – using the same logic which was employed in Greco-Roman times – but also in the positioning and movement of the camera in relation to those architectonic forms.
3.3 Interior of Discovery 1. (Kubrick, 1968)
Looking back to 2001 now, the next rotational spaceship that we encounter is the Discovery 1, on its way to Jupiter and contains a crew of 5 people (plate 3.3). As it is significantly smaller than Space Station V, the curvature of the space is much more pronounced: a further abstraction from Earthly, Euclidean space. It is introduced with an ultra-wide angle shot: follows one of the inhabitants of the space as he runs along the “corridor” which, being non-Euclidean, allows him to run in a ‘straight line’ which circles in on itself. Two conscious men inhabit this space, Dr. David Bowman, and Dr. Frank Poole, while four others are in “cryochambers” designed to keep them in what is described as a long term ‘hibernation’ – otherwise known as cryosleep, or stasis.This concept was relatively new at the time, although it had already appeared in several literary and cinematic works prior to 2001.[9] Cryosleep in Kubrick’s conception was unique because of its technologically induced state. It represents the human body at its most vulnerable, where its survival depends wholly on the technology surrounding it, keeping it alive. For the two active crew members, everything is catered for by the ship itself and its “brain,” HAL 9000, so they too remain alive at the mercy of a wholly artificial space.
3.4 Frank and Dave within Discovery 1. (Kubrick, 1968)
The space itself is represented from constantly changing perspectives and angles further distorting and wrapping the architectural form around the bodies of the crew (plate 3.4). Their psychological domination begins with a chess game between Frank and HAL, where HAL wins without difficulties. It progresses soon after, when HAL expresses concern about the mission to Dave. Before their conversation continues any longer, HAL is interrupted with news of an imminent external antenna failure. After they retrieve and check it, it appears that nothing is wrong, and HAL’s behavior comes into question. In attempts to find a space which is not permeated by HAL, so they can speak freely, Frank and Dave enter and turn off an extravehicular activity pod. Unbeknownst to them, HAL secretly reads their lips and finds out that they plan to deactivate him if it turns out that he was wrong about the antenna. Frank leaves the ship once more in order to replace the antenna. In his spacesuit, he leaves the pod, and when he is floating in space, HAL takes it over, severs his oxygen supply, and flings him into deep space. When Dave takes the other pod to attempt to rescue Frank, HAL locks them out while he discontinues life support to the remaining crew members. Dave, unable to convince HAL to open the airlock, decides to leave Frank, in order to manually override the lock, and let himself in. He immediately heads to HAL’s control center and deactivates him. Now near Jupiter, it is revealed by a prerecorded video that the mission’s original intention, only known by the three crew members in cryosleep and HAL, was to respond to a radio signal emitted by a black monolith, which is orbiting Jupiter.
Frank leaves the Discovery 1 with the pod once more and is pulled into a vortex. In what is known as the Stargate sequence, he watches from within the pod as it moves between two vertical walls of bright, changing colors. The vertical walls rotate to become a horizon, and a jump cut reveals an ultra-close-up of Dave’s eye, where the colors are not natural but instead bright yellow and blue (plate 3.5). It then cuts to what appears to be a variety of galaxies or star clusters. A closeup of his eye returns, this time in bright cyan and magenta. A red and magenta horizon manifests, and in the space above, there are what appear to be light blue, three-dimensional Euclidean forms (plate 3.6). It cuts once more between the closeup of the eye and back to a much more defined horizon, which becomes recognizable as a landscape (plate 3.7, 3.8).
3.5 Closeup of Dave’s eye. (Kubrick, 1968)
3.6 Stargate sequence: horizon with Euclidean shapes floating above. (Kubrick, 1968)
3.7 Closeup of Dave’s eye. (Kubrick, 1968)
3.8 A more recognizable landscape forms. (Kubrick, 1968)
In this sequence, Kubrick focuses very closely on two elements: the eye and the horizon. The eye takes on and perceives a variety of colors as the landscape becomes more and more recognizable. Reports of the youth of the time going to the movie high on drugs enticed a new poster marketing the movie, which contained an image from the Stargate sequence and a quote which read, “the ultimate trip.” Michelson (1969, 15), says, “The film’s reflexive strategy assumes the eye as ultimate agent of consciousness…” This psychedelic sequence recalls Goethe’s theory of the retinal afterimage, which he outlined in his Theory of Colors (1970 [1810]). It is a landmark study considered pivotal to the transition from the camera obscura model of visuality to one which is severed from any stable referent. Goethe (1970, 13), says “The eye cannot for a moment remain in a particular state determined by the object it looks upon. On the contrary, it is forced to a sort of opposition, which, in contrasting extreme with extreme, intermediate degree with intermediate degree, at the same time combines these opposite impressions, and thus ever tends to be whole, whether the impressions are successive or simultaneous and confined to one image.” Hegel makes a similar remark in his Phenomenology of Spirit, saying (1976, 98), “It must be pointed out that truth is not like stamped coin issued ready from the mint, and so can be taken up and used.” Hegel and Goethe identify a new kind of observer in which the eye is not a reliable communicator of objective truth. It provides, instead, a subjective experience, where the object is detached completely from the referent. In effect, vision is an unreliable communicator of truth, and everything perceivable exists within the realm of the psychological. It comes as no surprise, then, that spectators were supplementing the experience of the film with psychedelic drugs, which would induce an even further awareness of the new consciousness which Kubrick activates on the screen.
The sequence ends abruptly when the eye blinks and the color changes to a natural palette. The pod and Frank are suddenly in what appears to be a domestic space. Dave’s face is shown within the helmet while he appears to be having a seizure. After a few shots from outside the pod describe the domestic space, a much older Dave appears outside the pod, on the opposite end of the room, looking in (plate 3.9). He stares into the camera. The domestic space as it manifests itself around Dave is in effect his psychological space. In the reverse shot revealing the space Dave is looking at, the pod is not present. He walks around and looks at the uncanny space – a marble sink; a bathtub. After inspecting the bathroom and looking in the mirror, he hears the sound of silverware hitting porcelain. It is revealed that an even older Dave is sitting at a table, facing away, eating. The even older Dave looks back from the table, gets out of his chair and walks over to the bathroom. When he looks inside, it is empty. Each step that he takes echoes. In fact, every move that he makes seems to dominate the space acoustically. He sits back down at the table, and accidentally pushes a wine glass off, which shatters on the floor. When he looks up, he sees an even older version of himself in bed – on his deathbed, it appears – taking effortful breaths.
3.9 Dave, decades older. (Kubrick, 1968)
When considering everything but the floor, it is a baroque, domestic interior (plate 3.10). Baroque, of course, was the dominant western architectural style from the early 17thcentury to the mid 18thcentury, immediately preceded by the Renaissance. It is an immense contrast to the floor, which is a gridwork of light panels identical to the one which appears on the ceiling of Space Station V. It is important to look at the first time this gridwork appears: when Dr. Heywood Floyd first enters Space Station V and meets Mr. Miller (plate 3.11). It is a much more confined space than the vast spaces which end in an artificial, inverted horizon. In this space, the space looks as normal as it would on Earth. It appears to be a construction which conforms to Euclidean geometry. Alas, as is revealed moments later, that is not at all the case. Kubrick plays with the quasi-Euclidean space that the enormous Space Station V affords. It is augmented even more by the fact that the floor appears to be a cartesian grid. What is implied in its form, following the Hilton sequence, is the ambiguity of quasi-Euclidean space, and the finitude that it implies. In the words of Michelson (1969, 11), “The Voyage… in its deformation or suspension of the familiar framework of existence… project[s] us… through a Logics of the Imagination, to redeliver us in rebound from that surface, into the familiar, the known, the Real.” The gridwork returns in the quasi-Baroque architectonic space of the final sequence. This time, instead of being on the ceiling, the gridwork is on the floor: a reversal once more. The ambiguity remains in this reversal, and it is not elaborated upon. For the spectator, it is totally severed from any possible referent, as the only thing that links this sequence together is the montage itself. The spectator does not know what lies beyond this space – most likely nothing – as the last coherent space which was shown was that of Jupiter.
3.10 Older Dave eats at a table. (Kubrick, 1968)
3.11 Heywood Floyd arrives at Space Station V. (Kubrick, 1968)
In continuing and reversing the gridwork of illuminated panels – which at first appeared to describe a Euclidean space with a strongly implied infinite vanishing point and immediately after turned out to be a non-Euclidean, finite space – into the Baroque domestic space, Kubrick constructs a quasi-Euclidean space. It is an otherwise Euclidean space which embodies a new visuality and is psychologically void of an implied infinity. The spectators witness the creation of a new system of space and thus a new system of visuality, leaving them skeptical of the reality which surrounds them. The spectator goes through a Goethean transformation as they witness the “emptying out” of Dave’s interiority, and as the quasi-baroque, quasi-Euclidean space becomes his psychological space.
3.12 Dave, on his deathbed, encounters the monolith. (Kubrick, 1968)
3.13 Earth and the Fetus. (Kubrick, 1968)
Dave raises his hand and points towards the black monolith which has silently appeared at the foot of his bed (plate 3.12). He reaches out towards it. Perhaps the monolith is Kubrick’s version of Kepler’s daemon – perhaps Kubrick is the daemon of Cold War America. In a reverse shot, Dave has silently turned into a fetus within a glowing sphere. A jump cut reveals the Moon at the center of the image. The camera pans down to reveal the Earth on the right, and, gradually, on the left, the spherical form containing the fetus, now as large as the Earth itself (plate 3.13). This shot must be considered in relation to the original screening context of the film: the Cinerama (3.14). The Cinerama screen was so large that it was semi-circular in form. It was designed to wrap around the spectator’s peripheral vision, creating the most immersive experience possible. If we consider what the screen would have looked like in a Cinerama context, a third sphere is revealed: the spectator’s sphere of vision.
3.14 Earth and Fetus: Cinerama mockup. (Kubrick, 1968)
The spectator has both the fetus and the Earth in sight. The shot then cuts to a view of just the fetus, which, as the music grows increasingly epic, rotates gradually towards the screen. The fetus makes direct eye contact with the lens, confronting the spectator with the dawn of a new visuality – a new psychophysiological reality. Humanity is reborn into a new, quasi-Euclidean world – a new age of visuality, a spherical imaginary wholly severed from a physical reality. Kubrick exhibits a sensitivity for the sociopolitical, philosophical and paradigmatic shifts taking place during the Cold War unlike any other. He understood that a new, quasi-Euclidean world was forming in the surge of the Cold War and that it was deeply grounded in the metaphysical, perspectival and astronomical revolutions of the Renaissance. What he identifies and proposes in 2001 – a philosophical text in its own right – is a rebirth: a 20th century “renaissance” bringing the modern world into postmodernity.
Conclusion
Panofsky speaks of the rationalization of physical space onto a flat surface with an implied, unified vanishing point. He suggests that it produced a notion of infinity as it mapped a flat understanding of Euclidean space onto the optical and spherical experience of aggregate Euclidean space in “empirical reality.” Crary speaks of the camera obscura of the Renaissance, and how it inspired a philosophical understanding of human consciousness as an interiorized and disembodied subject. In addition to perspective and the camera obscura, the Renaissance witnessed radical shifts in astronomy and a spherical imaginary, evidenced in works such as the first work of science fiction: Kepler’s Somnium. For Kepler, space travel did not have anything to do with the body – it had to do with the mind. He postulated that, with a good enough description or imagination, one could travel anywhere by means of one’s own mind, hence Fiolxhilde’s statement, “I learn as much by asking [the daemon] as I would by going there myself.” The technological advances which spawned in World War II produced the conditions for a Panofskyan reversal. The decades following WWII evidence a great struggle to find a new way of understanding the world. In doing so, they – to use Panofsky’s phrase (2012, 47) – erected, “a new edifice out of the rubble of the old,” turning back to obsolete and forgotten models of thought in search of a way to move forward. It is evidenced in products of the time such as the dymaxion map, which fragmented the graticule of the Renaissance globe and world map. Similarly, the Réseau plate sought to rationalize and deconstruct photographic image space using a Cartesian grid. The television briefly revived the camera obscura model but quickly dissolved in the surge of nuclear apocalyptic discourse and mass media, which flooded the psycho-domestic space. The production of space was thus key to this “reversal.” The distillation of this discourse – this Space Age dialectic – is what can be witnessed in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. He calls into question the perspectival representational understanding which had reigned since the Renaissance through the curved architecture of the film sets. The massive, curved screen on which the image itself was projected revives and an understanding of vision millennia old – it remains the only constant throughout the experience of the film. As the 70mm film runs through the projection and out onto the screen, each sequential image is questioned. Everything – from the sunrise at the beginning of the “Dawn of Man” sequence, to the non-Euclidean spaces within Space Station V, Dave’s Goethean transformation to the quasi-Euclidean, quasi-Baroque interior of Dave’s psycho-domestic space – goes on trial under antique authorities. Kubrick, like Kepler, understood that space travel has less to do with the body and more to do with the mind. 2001 was a 70mm somnium– or to adopt Michelson’s phrase (1969, 10) – “a dream for waking minds.” The world that we live in today is in many ways build around questions posed during the Cold War. The question of a spherical imaginary is becoming increasingly relevant once more as space exploration is becoming increasingly privatized, and the American government is proposing the implementation of a so-called “Space Force” – a militarization of outer space. The threats which humanity faces are more serious than ever before, and they are developing alongside an increasingly skeptical public. The question regarding the preservation of our place on this planet remains ignored by the present-day nuclear powers of the world, who continue to opt for political and financial power over the safety and wellbeing of nature and humanity. The big question, then, is how humanity might turn back the clock enough for “Doomsday” to become a notion of the past – so that we might replace our desire to find and colonize other planets with the desire to repair and sustain our own “Spaceship Earth” – and then allow a the clock to tick forward in perpetuity once more.
[1]It is interesting to note the neo-Marxian, interdisciplinary core which links both Cosgrove and Crary, and also the influence which Panofsky had on the work of Crary.
[2]The National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
[3]Kepler distributed Somnium in manuscript form around 1608, but it was first published posthumously by his son, Ludwig Kepler, in 1635.
[4]I will return to the notion of disembodiment after I first take a closer look at the abstractions and problematics involved in a celestial imaginary from a terrestrial perspective.
[5]In fact, they went so far as to shape their own monumental architectonic forms around an understanding of optical absence of straight lines in human perception – an architectural technique known as entasis. This is most clearly evidenced in Doric temples.
[6]Aerial cartography was one of the principal means of understanding the political actions of the Soviet Union. It was, in fact, aerial photographs which revealed that nuclear weapons were being brought to Cuba, sparking one of the closest encounters with nuclear war in history. In the process, two images of a landscape from above would be taken so that, using photogrammetry and the Réseau plate, they could have an understanding of the vertical depth of the image.
[7]Quasi-Euclidean space is a concept which I will return to and expand upon throughout the rest of this essay, but it is helpful at this point to illustrate a basic definition, or at least description of what it is, and why it was a new phenomenon created within the Cold War: Quasi-Euclidean space refers to a Euclidean architectonic space which has not physically changed, but psychologically – in the conscious and subconscious imaginary – the space has changed profoundly, informed indirectly by representations of non-Euclidean spaces.
[8]Although he also took a very passionate stance on the Manhattan Project and the implications of the atomic bomb, this was Wiener’s only move into the subject (his main body of work deals with cybernetics).
[9]The concept first appeared in the literary work, The Frozen Pirate (1887), and subsequently in Dix Mille Ans dans un Bloc de Glace (1889). Prior to 2001: A Space Odyssey, cryosleep appears in Buck Rogers (1939) and The Man with Nine Lives (1940).
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Films
2001: A Spacce Odyssey. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. United States: Stanley Kubrick Productions. 1968
Dr. Strangelove, Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. United States: Columbia Pictures Corp. Presents, 1964
On the Beach. Directed by Stanley Kramer. United States: Lomitas Productions, Inc. 1959.
Operation Doorstep. United States:Byron Incorporated, Federal Civil Defence Administration. 1953.