Task #8
Golden Record Curation
Eva's Interstellar Playlist
In 1977 NASA launched two spacecraft Voyager 1 and 2; their mission was to extend the exploration of the solar system as far as the outer limits of the Sun’s sphere of influence, and possibly beyond.
Onboard each Voyager was a time capsule, The Golden Record, intended to communicate the story of Earth to extraterrestrials. Each Voyager message is a gold plated copper disc, a phonograph, containing sounds and images to showcase the diversity of life and culture on earth.
This week’s task was to curate the 27 original music pieces down to 10 items and then explore the criteria used to include or exclude certain pieces.
Welcome to Eva’s Interstellar Playlist…
My List of 10
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Reflections on Methodology
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I was initially struck by the humour of having a musical ‘philistine’ like myself chose the 10 tracks to represent humankind in all it’s diversity. Then I began to think this may be a strategically smart way to accomplish the task…
My first thought was that I would need to research more about music and the particular songs before I could choose which tracks were important.
In the readings this week one of the clear messages that came across was that as a society we often choose to preserve what is important to us at the current time and context we are in, however, we don’t actually know the value of artifacts in the future. Considering that the Voyagers travels will be approximately 40 years in length what we send could turn out to be a representation of Earth that is out of date.
So current societal culture and thinking should not be a criterion in curating the artifacts. Having very little knowledge of music and musical culture might actually give me an edge to choosing the 10 tracks.
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In addition, as I listen many/most of the tracks are unfamiliar to me, they are outside of my ethnocentric view of music and culture.
So, what were my criteria?
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Rumsey’s video about digital memory being focussed into the future, the idea that the brain builds a model of the world by remembering things lead to the consideration that the tracks chosen should be memorable and distinct. So, no two tracks should sound the same.
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First make sure each track has a different instrument
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A single instrument best rather than trying to pick out several in a crowd of sounds
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Different rhythms
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Different range of tones, with high and low notes
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If two tracks had the same instrument, then choose the one with a distinctly human voice
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Make sure both male and female voices are included, both as solo and group artists.
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Tracks with repeating patterns
The final one comes from my current Netflix watching a show about codebreaking…and looking for patterns in messages, especially repeating patterns. This would not only assist with deciphering some meaning but would show that the ‘sound/waveform’ was purposeful.
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Let the Interstellar RoadTrip begin......
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