Link to Erin’s entry: https://blogs.ubc.ca/marranca/2021/03/07/task-8-golden-record-curation/

Erin’s approach to the Golden Record curation assignment stood out to me. The map she created depicting where her musical choices originated along with other connections she researched, was a clever way to visualize how diverse her selection was. Erin recognized that completely removing bias was impossible, something I also mentioned in my task. As this was a personal curation, it was challenging to be completely objective as what we chose to keep (and subsequently, what we chose to discard) reflected our own experiences and preferences.

Upon comparison, we only had 2 tracks in common despite our common goal to be intentionally inclusive and acknowledge diversity. Similar to Erin’s conscious decision to choose one Bach song, I also made it a point not to pick too many European composers (the typical “classical music” I’ve learned about and listened to growing up). I enjoyed reading our classmate’s reasonings behind their tracks, but something that stuck out to me with Erin’s was her assertion on the importance of “how great that scene is from Back to the Future? Johnny B. Goode is historically important!” For me, Back to the Future brings back memories of my mom being really excited for that ride at the Universal Studios but me being really afraid of it. The movie came out before I was born, and I never watched it when I was young (I didn’t move to Canada until I was 5, so a lot of entertainment I consumed depended on what my parents watched, and most of it wasn’t typical Western television). Thus, I couldn’t really relate with the importance of Johnny B. Goode and thus I left it out of mine! Can anything ever be objectively historically important?

However, I fully understand why Erin chose to include that in hers, and this also helps explain why our classmates differed so much in our choices, despite many of us sharing a similar “diversity criterion.” Like what Timothy Ferris (2019) states in episode 65 of the Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast, the goal for the Golden Record was “that we try to be as inclusive as possible. And second, that we make a good record” (28:50). Erin mentions that the Wedding Song would be good enough to put on a mixtape for her friend’s wedding. She also had some suggestions of what other tracks (e.g., Daft Punk) could’ve been better choices for the record. I, too, would’ve selected other ones (e.g., add in some kpop) than what was on the list. It was indeed a challenging endeavour for Carl Sagan and his team to create this Golden Record, and I assumed there would’ve been a lot of opinions on what could be considered a “good record.”

References
Taylor, D. (Host). (2019). Voyager Golden Record (No. 65) [Audio podcast episode]. In Twenty Thousand Hertz. https://www.20k.org/episodes/voyagergoldenrecord