Week 8 Link – Golden Record Curation Assignment (Rania Ismail)

Rania Ismail:  https://blogs.ubc.ca/met2020/2020/07/02/task-8-golden-record-curation-assignment/

Patricia McLean:  https://blogs.ubc.ca/course9fa832d3ed5e9bc0e2a4b9d769b3ff09f6e98b71/wp-admin/post.php?post=135&action=edit

Preamble

This assignment had me immersed in the idea of how music can be a mode of communication to others.  It can, sometimes more easily than words, text, convey and emotion to sentiment.  Think of music in church – the difference between the music at a funeral and the music at a wedding.  Movie soundtracks are essential in films – without them much of the meaning the director is attempting to convey would otherwise be lost.  I was intrigued by the addition of music to a class on text – and then it all made so much sense. 

“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.” ― Plato

“Music is … A higher revelation than all Wisdom & Philosophy” ― Ludwig van Beethoven

The task this week was to curate 10 pieces of music from the 27 included on the Gold Record.  Further, the selections should be explained with regard to what parameters and criteria were used to chose them.  The assignment outline stated “[t]hree to five thoughtful sentences will suffice for your justification”.

My first observation when comparing Rania’s submission to my own, was the interpretation of the direction – “three to five sentences”.  Interestingly, it appears that Rania took that to mean three to five sentences describing her selections.  I took that to mean, three to five sentences for each selection.  Re-reading the instruction, I think fairly, the instruction could be taken both ways.  It is always fascinating to me how language, which appears to be so precise, it not necessarily precise.

Rania and I took fairly different approaches to this assignment – both in content and in presentation.

Rania curated her music selection based on the emotions evoked by the music.  An interesting choice.  I took a more global, culturally expansive approach to the assignment, selecting a wider range of music choices in an attempt to represent a broader global perspective of same to any one/being/thing, out in space that might hear the music.  Rania also chose Beethoven, Mozart and Bach because “[t]hese composers were immortalized by their work and their music which represent [sic] our ethereal, aesthetic universe”.  I love European classical music, but, I was brought up with European classical music.  I might think that world citizens who were not brought up with European classical music as the “gold standard” for composition would have selected, and thought that there should be selections of music representing other cultures.

I was also so enthused by the assignment (shades of constructivist teaching – I got enthused and therefore spent a fair bit of time contemplating the assignment and the multiple meanings it could have – not only selected my choices, and explained same in some detail, I added my personal non-global selections!.

The tool selected by both Rania and myself was WordPress.  However I did take advantage of the ability to drop in media and added Youtube videos of my additional personal musical selections.