Unknown Artifact

“Unknown Artifact” is an experimental composition created through a study of musique concrète. This was a project in composition through found objects, or pre-existing audio source that are not themselves deliberately arranged in any musical way (in the traditional sense).

“Unknown Artifact” uses only sounds found on the golden records of the Voyager deep space probes. These records, found on both Voyager 1 and 2, contain hours of content meant to help illustrate human civilization and life on Earth, including spoken greetings in a wide variety of languages, sounds of nature and animals, music from Bach to rock, and even the auralized brainwaves of the golden records’ project director.

The cover of the golden records on the left, depicting instructions for the construction and use of a record player, among other scientifically notable illustrations.

For my own composition, “Unknown Artifact,” I wanted to depict the phenomenology of these sounds, or the perceived experience that an alien listener might have if one were to stumble upon and playback these records. To them, the Voyager probe and the records would be an artifact of a world totally unknown to them, containing sounds they may have never heard before, and I imagined this could be a very terrifying experience. I arranged the selection of voices, music, and natural sounds on the record in such a way that might convey the fear an unfamiliar listener might experience. In the end, however, it may likely be the sound of water that is most familiar to them; the best-connecting element to demonstrate that we may have something in common after all.