In Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the character Dave Bowman draws pictures in his spare time. Perhaps bored with the unchanging view out the window, Dave turns his eye instead to his stasis-bound crewmates who wait silently for their arrival at Jupiter.

Silence, coupled with the somehow perfectly placed Strauss waltz, plays a major role in Kubrick’s film. It provides a space in which the psychological dynamic between Dave and the on-board computer, HAL, is allowed to take form. It provides a space in which Kubrick’s elegantly designed spaceship, port and space station can be—as their makers (a team of consulting NASA engineers) intended—simple, beautiful, dreamlike and utopian examples of technology that was soon to come.