The Voyage spacecraft is finally going to release a follow-up album to The Golden Record
If you’re a space geek, you’re well aware of the travels of Voyager 1 (now 15.5 billion miles away) and Voyager 2 (about 13 billion miles) as they leave the Solar System for points unknown. Both are still operating since they were launched in 1977.
If you’re a space geek and a music nerd, you’ll know that each spacecraft is carrying a copy of the Golden Record, a phonograph record etched with the sounds of Planet Earth. When an alien civilization eventually intercepts one of them (and note that I said “when”), and provided one of them doesn’t acquire some sort of sentience and attempts to destroy us (Star Trek: The Motion Picture), they will find instructions on how to build a turntable so they can play it.
Finally, almost fifty years after the first Golden Record was affixed to Voyager, there’s now a follow-up.
The new project is entitled Earth Rising: Messages from the Pale Blue Dot. This is the first in a series of three audio works from Artangel, an arts organization which loves space. Directed by Mariam Zulfiqar, she came up with the idea of a modern version of the Golden Record. But instead of introducing us to aliens, this one has the aim of introducing us to ourselves.
Available soon digitally, we’ll be able to hear poems and experimental compositions that deal with all of Earth’s current crises. For example, Sebastián Riffo Valdebenito recorded a track consisting of the sounds of rock carving at the petroglyph site of Valle del Encanto in Coquimbo in Chile. Another artist, Michel Nieva, wrote a short story called The Alien Mother, which is set on Mars. Another invokes all the insanity going on in America.
Read more about what will be on the album here.
