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Hey aliens, here’s our new album! How do you follow up a 50-year-old record that’s hurtling through space?
The Golden Record – launched in 1977 on the Voyager space probes – contained everything from Chuck Berry to Chinese dialects and the sound of humpback whales. But what would we put on it today?
Known as the Golden Record, this 12-inch, gold-plated copper disc was an album compiled by astronomer Carl Sagan featuring everything from classical music and spoken-word greetings to the sounds of nature and a blast of Chuck Berry’s Jonny B Goode. It’s certainly the key influence behind Earth Rising: Messages from the Pale Blue Dot, the first in a series of three audio works by arts organisation Artangel that are being released on digital platforms in the run-up to the Golden Record’s 50th anniversary. Sebastián Riffo Valdebenito creates a track from the sounds of rock carving at the petroglyph site of Valle del Encanto in Coquimbo, Chile, while Michel Nieva contributes The Alien Mother, a short story set in a future where humanity has colonised Mars.
Or read this on The Guardian