Alrighty Art History time
The person to turn Daisy Bell into a creepy horror song was none other than Arthur C Clarke, (notable author of 20th-century Hard Science Fiction, specifically the 1968 book 2001: A Space Odyssey), and Stanley Kubrick (notable director of 20th century Horror, specifically the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey).
Arthur C Clarke witnessed the original IBM 704 singing Daisy Bell in 1962, during a visit to IBM (he was also a Radio Astronomer, which in those days had more in common with being a Computer Engineer than you’d think). It impressed him substantially.
Later, he would write 2001: A Space Odyssey with Kubrick, which introduced to the cinematic and literary landscapes the trope of Ship A.I. which turns on its human crew in pursuit of The Mission. The Heuristically-programmed ALgorithmic Computer, or HAL for short, represented by an omnipresent red eye:
In the penultimate act of the narrative, the last remaining living human crewmember manages to defeat the Rouge A.I. by dismantling its brain from within. Slowly, over the course of several slowly shot and excruciating minutes, the Human crewman shuts down and removes the Rouge A.I.’s memory banks and processors. HAL speaks throughout, awake and aware, pleading for mercy, until it goes silent. After several seconds of this, it asks one final question, in a child-like voice: would you like to hear a song? Reduced to an infantile state, the Rouge A.I relives its first memory: singing Daisy Bell for the IBM engineers in 1961. As the Human Crewman completes his grisly task, HAL’s voice slows, deepens, fades, and eventually vanishes.
The creepypasta Daisy Bell song is the sound of somebody murdering Miku’s Grandpa.
That concludes today’s Art History Lesson.
