Golden Record Curation

Here’s my selection of 10 pieces from the Golden Record:

1. Peru, panpipes and drum, collected by Casa de la Cultura, Lima. 0:52
2. Azerbaijan S.S.R., bagpipes, recorded by Radio Moscow. 2:30
3. China, ch’in, “Flowing Streams,” performed by Kuan P’ing-hu. 7:37
4. Japan, shakuhachi, “Tsuru No Sugomori” (“Crane’s Nest,”) performed by Goro Yamaguchi. 4:51
5. India, raga, “Jaat Kahan Ho,” sung by Surshri Kesar Bai Kerkar. 3:30
6. Navajo Indians, Night Chant, recorded by Willard Rhodes. 0:57
7. Bulgaria, “Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin,” sung by Valya Balkanska. 4:59
8. Mexico, “El Cascabel,” performed by Lorenzo Barcelata and the Mariachi México. 3:14
9. Australia, Aborigine songs, “Morning Star” and “Devil Bird,” recorded by Sandra LeBrun Holmes. 1:26
10. Zaire, Pygmy girls’ initiation song, recorded by Colin Turnbull. 0:56

I followed one criteria for finalizing my list: How can I best represent as many cultures as possible by choosing 10 from the existing 27?  This guiding criteria was formed after considering some of the questions that Dr. Rumsey raised throughout her presentation (Required Viewing for Week 8).

“What can we afford to lose?”

“How do we distinguish noise from signal?”

“How do we know what has long term value?”

“What are the things that we use very much today, but may not turn out to be of long term value?

“How do we keep from making mistakes that our successors curse us for, not having captured something which is so important?”

“What good is memory to begin with?”

After considering these questions, I decided that cultural diversity of Earth is something I cannot afford to lose if I were to curate something for making first contact with extraterrestrial life.

There are several words I would use to describe this assignment: interesting, difficult, futile. The idea that the Golden Record could be use to make contact with intelligent intergalactic life, allowing them to decode and find value in the audio information it contains is interesting, but improbable. Using 27 songs to preserve the memories of and represent all of humanity is impossibly difficult, given the diversity of everything on planet Earth (flora, fauna, cultures, etc.). Narrowing the already incomplete representation of just 27 down to 10 is downright futile.

It’s inevitable that important information would be lost. Knowing what we want to communicate through the Golden Records is one thing, but it will be probably be completely misinterpreted by intelligent lifeforms who discover it. The whole attempt is based on too many assumptions. A worst case scenario is that music could be a declaration of war for them, so whatever sound tracks we select might lead to invasion and complete annihilation of the human race. Or maybe an equally worse scenario: the lifeform that discovers this is deathly allergic to sounds and we end up committing xenocide.

References

Brown University. (2017). Abby Smith Rumsey: “Digital Memory: What Can We Afford to Lose?”