Task 8: Golden Record Curation
What an interesting task this week! As Dr. Abby Smith posed the question, “What can we afford to lose?” My brain began to spin thinking of all the things, events, news, history that have been curated and written down simply because someone valued it. I think I found this particularly interesting with the realization of how much power there is in being able to decide the value of information or artifact, manuscript for future generations – What do you leave out?
In this task, I did my best to not overthink the process of selecting songs. In the podcast by Twenty Thousand Hertz – #65 | Voyager Golden Record, the authors of the record note that thousands of so
ngs could have made the list — but more information isn’t necessarily better (How true, especially in today’s society!).
As I ‘curated’ the Golden Record, I continuously came back to the purpose of the record – if, this record was to reach life somewhere-sometime what would I want to represent us here on Earth? With this at the forefront, I wanted to make sure that my selection was a “global sound” – distinct and unique sounds from various groups needed to be represented- every culture’s perception, experience and history with music is so vastly different. I think it is an important challenge to attempt to encapsulate those different ways varying cultures attempt to make meaning through music. Additionally, I wanted various sounds of percussion, voice, tempo, and rhythms to be depicted within the list. Lastly, I selected (other than track #22 – Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 – which is a personal favorite) tracks that I thought were not antagonizing or threatening in any capacity. I found these criteria more challenging as the authors talked about the potential of other life forms only hearing specific frequencies or noises – which may completely void these criteria altogether leaving them with a completely different experience than I anticipated. But with such a great unknown as that it is not something I dwelled on.
*My curated list is in chronological order according to the track numbers from the Golden Record.