In this week’s task we were to take the data presented from the Golden Record Curation task and view it through the Palladio application. The first presentation of the data was fascinating but was ultimately confusing. It appeared to be a massive nest of lines, dots, and words at first glance. I was not entirely certain how I was to proceed at first to begin the task but after some playing around with the Palladio application I was able to learn how to manipulate the filters and showcase different types of connections and themes.
Immediately I sought to try and discover what 3 songs were the most selected by my peers in class. The ranking went as follows:
1. Track 25: Jaat Kahan Ho
2. Track 18: Fifth Symphony (First Movement)
3a. Track 23: Wedding Song
3b. Track 3: Percussion Senegal
I then selected this list of songs and wanted to see how these songs connected my peers and myself. How many of us selected all of these songs? How many chose only one? For myself I had only selected the two most popular songs in Jaat Kahan Ho and Fifth Symphony (First Movement). Only two of my classmates had selected all four of the top songs. Do they have a better judgement of what should be sent in to space because of their understanding of music or was it just random chance that they happened to select these songs?
I think what makes this type of data and its’ representation interesting is the discussion to be had about the implications of it. I feel that the choices made here are entirely subjective and so if a song does not appeal to what you perceive to be as music or at least align with your understanding of music, you are not likely to select it. For instance, I know that I chose more western music as it more closely aligned with my personal understanding of music.
After the top three songs, I next decided to take a look at the bottom three songs. All three of these songs only had 3 people select them each. The songs in no particular order are as follows:
- Track 8: Men’s House Song
- Track 27: String Quartet No.13 in B flat
- Track 17: The Well-Tempered Clavier
What I found interesting about this set of songs and their connections was actually the complete lack of connections. Only The Well-Tempered Clavier and String Quartet No.13 in B flat had a user select both of them. Men’s House Song was not connected to the other two songs in any way.
The final parameters that I set for the filters was to connect all of the top songs and the bottom songs to see what kind of connections there were there. If you selected a top song did that automatically guarantee that you would not select a bottom song? Was your taste so exquisite there was no way you could choose an unpopular song? The answer was no. In fact, every single person that selected a bottom song also selected at least one of the top songs.
So what conclusions can be drawn from this data? My time with Palladio informed me that taste and music selection is entirely subjective. Simply because you will select something obscure and less popular does not mean that you will not select something commonly selected. A person’s taste may be broad and expansive creating a large variance in what may be selected for this data.
On the topic of null data, it appears that there is no null data so it is hard to comment on what that might mean. Perhaps the null data is meant to be those songs that were not selected by a single participant.
References:
Stanford. (n.d.). Golden Record A [Graph]. Palladio-app. hdlab.stanford.edu/palladio-app/#/visualization
Systems Innovation (2015, April 19). Network connections [Video]. YouTube.
Taylor, D. (Host). (2019). Voyager golden record [Audio podcast episode]. In Twenty thousand hertz.