For a girl who grew up wanting to touch the stars and be an astronaut, Murmers of Earth is simply amazing. It's a complete edition of the images and music that was included in the Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977 - the year I was born. (another good, technical link here
"The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record-a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University. Dr. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Carter and U.N. Secretary General Waldheim. Each record is encased in a protective aluminum jacket, together with a cartridge and a needle. Instructions, in symbolic language, explain the origin of the spacecraft and indicate how the record is to be played. The 115 images are encoded in analog form. The remainder of the record is in audio, designed to be played at 16-2/3 revolutions per minute. It contains the spoken greetings, beginning with Akkadian, which was spoken in Sumer about six thousand years ago, and ending with Wu, a modern Chinese dialect. Following the section on the sounds of Earth, there is an eclectic 90-minute selection of music, including both Eastern and Western classics and a variety of ethnic music"
The collection gives you a boxed set of the data, the production, and the complete musical selection that was contained within the craft. I think it's utterly facinating to be able to have a copy of what was sent out into the universe and since they are rare and long out of print, they're not cheap (well, $99 is a lot for me). What an amazingly neat thing though and I need to remember about this as it's definately something I want to get to pour into and immerse myself in.
~ flowers bloom near Memory and Dream
at 5/6/2003 11:41:51 PM ~
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