In this screenshot of Community 1 (Figure 1), there are five song nodes that had the most edges for this community. Two of the most popular, Track 23: Wedding Song and Track 20: Night Chant, were included in my top 10 list, but Track 9: Crane’s Nest, another popular choice, was not. I found it interesting that I was only related to this community by those two songs and none of the other four choices.

Figure 1: Golden Record Community 1

In the screenshot of Community 2 (Figure 2), there is a close community centred around their most popular song Track 25: Jaat Kahan Ho. Seven people who chose that song, including me, did not also choose the other tracks favored in this community, such as Track 4, Track 8 and Track 19.

Figure 2: Golden Record Community 2

In Figure 3, Community 3 is connected to four songs but only the most popular one, Track 3: Percussion, was in my top 10 list.

Figure 3: Golden Record Community 3

Community 4 (Figure 4) is connected by six songs, with the predominant one (Track 18: Fifth Symphony) being my only top 10 choice. The other five songs were outliers.

Figure 4: Golden Record Community 4

In Figure 5 below, this community was connected to four song nodes but three of the strongest connections were between Track 24: Flowing Streams, Track 14: Melancholy Blues and Track 7: Johnny B. Goode. It is notable that most of this community selected all three of those songs. and of those who selected all three, only three also selected the outlier Track 10: Gavotte en rondeaux.

Figure 5: Golden Record Community 5

The final community (Figure 6), is more unusual because two of the three songs tracks could almost form separate communities if not for the mutual connections of only four people. My only choice of the three was Track 11: The Magic Flute. It may be significant that the three tracks are all by Western European classical composers.

Figure 6: Golden Record Community 6

I would have liked to have the ability in Palladio to display a view of all my own 10 song choices to see what communities I was connected to (if any) for all 10 choices, or at least for a majority of my choices. I was not sure if I could arrange the data by my own song choices, but ti was helpful to see some of my song choices and their degree of connectivity to various ad hoc communities.

As for my null choices, all of which I have listed below, I could not identify any data in the visualizations that might suggest my reasons for not including these songs. Also, I could not make any assumptions about the choices other people have made without knowing more about them and what cultures they might identify with. For example, if there was additional data such as age, level of education, knowledge of music history, ethnicity, career type, political and religious affiliations or other such information, the visualizations may have shown more obvious similarities about the people who chose the songs and even why they did not choose particular songs, too.

• Track 1: Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F
• Track 2: Java, court gamelan, “Kinds of Flowers,”
• Track 4: Zaire, Pygmy girls’ initiation song
• Track 5: Australia, Aborigine songs, “Morning Star” and “Devil Bird”
• Track 6: Mexico, “El Cascabel”
• Track 8: New Guinea, men’s house song
• Track 9: Japan, shakuhachi, “Tsuru No Sugomori” (“Crane’s Nest”)
• Track 10: Bach, “Gavotte en rondeaux”
• Track 12: Georgian S.S.R., chorus, “Tchakrulo”
• Track 13: Peru, panpipes and drum
• Track 16: Stravinsky, Rite of Spring, Sacrificial Dance
• Track 17: Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier
• Track 19: Bulgaria, “Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin”
• Track 21: Holborne, Paueans, Galliards, Almains and Other Short Aeirs, “The Fairie Round”
• Track 22: Solomon Islands, panpipes
• Track 26: Blind Willie Johnson, “Dark Was the Night,”
• Track 27: Beethoven, String Quartet No. 13 in B flat, Opus 130, Cavatina

References:

NASA. (n.d.). Voyager – music on the Golden Record. NASA. https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/music/

Palladio (n.d.) Golden Record data (uploaded November 1, 2023). Palladio. https://hdlab.stanford.edu/palladio-app/

Systems Innovation. (2015, April 18). Graph theory overviewLinks to an external site. [Video]. YouTube.

Systems Innovation. (2015, April 19). Network connectionsLinks to an external site. [Video]. YouTube.

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