Table Of Content

Alien Listening CChhuuaa RReehhddiinngg ppaaggeess__2277..iinndddd 11 44//2277//2211 22::1122 PPMM CChhuuaa RReehhddiinngg ppaaggeess__2277..iinndddd 22 44//2277//2211 22::1122 PPMM Alien Listening Voyager’s Golden Record and Music from Earth Daniel K. L. Chua Alexander Rehding with illustrations by Lau Kwong Shing and Takahiro Kurashima Z O N E B O O K S • N E W Y O R K 2021 CChhuuaa RReehhddiinngg ppaaggeess__2277..iinndddd 33 44//2277//2211 22::1122 PPMM © 2021 Daniel K. L. Chua and Alexander Rehding zone books 633 Vanderbilt Street Brooklyn, NY 11218 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopy- ing, microfilming, recording, or otherwise (except for that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the Publisher. Printed in the United States of America. Distributed by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, and Woodstock, United Kingdom Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Chua, Daniel K. L., 1966 – author. | Rehding, Alexander, author. | Kurashima, Takahiro, 1970 – illustrator. | Lau, Kwong Shing, illustrator. Title: Alien listening : Voyager’s golden record and music from Earth / Daniel K. L. Chua, Alexander Rehding ; with illustrations by Lau Kwong Shing and Takahiro Kurashima. Description: New York : Zone Books, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “In 1977 NASA shot a mixtape into outer space. The Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecraft contains world music and sounds of the Earth with which humanity represents itself to any extra- terrestrial civilizations. This book asks the big questions that the Golden Record raises. Can music live up to its reputation as the universal language in communi cations with the unknown? How do we fit all of human culture into a time capsule that will barrel through space for tens of thousands of years?” — Provided by publisher. Identifiers: lccn 2020044647 (print) | lccn 2020044648 (ebook) | isbn 9781942130536 (hardcover) | isbn 9781942130543 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Exomusicology. | Voyager Project. Classification: lcc ml3799.4 c58 2021 (print) | lcc ml3799.4 (ebook) | ddc 780.999 — dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020044647 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020044648 CChhuuaa RReehhddiinngg ppaaggeess__2277..iinndddd 44 44//2277//2211 22::1122 PPMM Contents Pre(inter)face 7 Introduction: Blink Bang 15 Instruction Sheet 43 part 1 toward an intergalactic music theory of everything i Manifesto 51 ii Blueprint 65 part 2 a media theory of the third kind iii Sender 105 iv Transmission 129 v Receiver 167 coda vi Deﬁ nition 189 vii Repeat 207 Appendix 221 Notes 225 Readings 249 Index 261 CChhuuaa RReehhddiinngg ppaaggeess__2277..iinndddd 55 44//2277//2211 22::1122 PPMM CChhuuaa RReehhddiinngg ppaaggeess__2277..iinndddd 66 44//2277//2211 22::1122 PPMM Pre(inter)face T his book began on the back of a napkin in 2016. Unfortunately, this object is no longer with us, most likely because its cosmic significance transpired only many days later, after a flurry of emails between us: Could it be that our very ordinary breakfast in a corpo- rate hotel in Vancouver was the most stimulating exchange we expe- rienced at an annual convention of musicologists and music theorists? Sad. But maybe! For sure, it was the most extraordinary encounter. What were the chances of two scholars from distant corners of the Earth with no prior knowledge of each other’s nascent thoughts on intergalactic music connecting over breakfast? It must have been cosmic providence. We regret the napkin is no longer here as proof. Intergalactic music is no small project. Just thinking about it after breakfast ruptured our rational capacity and sent our imagination adrift in space. At first, we considered forming the Intergalactic Council of Musicologists to propagate our grandiose ideas. After all, who wouldn’t want to don a cape and preside as supreme com- mander over an intergalactic council? Then we came down to Earth and thought an edited book would be more practical for the learned corridors of academia. The esteemed members of our intergalactic council could simply be demoted to contributors under our edi- torship, and that coveted cape of supreme authorship could double neatly as a book cover to contain our delusions of power. However, such a predictable genre would betray the cosmic vision on our napkin: an edited book would be too stuffy, if not a bit dusty, for a 7 CChhuuaa RReehhddiinngg ppaaggeess__2277..iinndddd 77 44//2277//2211 22::1122 PPMM ALIEN LISTENING musicological space mission, and it would certainly limit our flights of fancy. So finally we decided to take responsibility for our own madness, and this jointly authored monograph is the result. Had the napkin survived, it would have revealed a gaping hole at the core of our joint venture. This was less an accidental tear than a hypothetical placeholder. When we started the project, our thinking was devoid of any preformed theory or brand of philosophy to underwrite the mission. There was no method to frame the research (except, perhaps, the hole, which is not much of a frame). In fact, there was no research prior to the formation of the content. There — — was just a gap a deliberate gap because we decided to work backward. Rather than apply theories and methods from elsewhere to validate music’s academic credentials, we began with the object itself: music. Or more precisely, music in space and its realization on the two Voyager spacecraft that NASA rocketed beyond our solar system in search of alien life. Once this music conditioned the materials for thought, its ramifications were given free rein to attract whatever theories, philosophies, and methods lay in its path until they orbited the object like the rings of Saturn. It was an act of reverse research, simultaneously an experiment in erasure and an exercise in attention. First, we attended to the object, then we wrote about it, and finally we read, searching for the literature that would have influenced our writing had we done things the right way around. Of course, our brains were hardly blank or unbiased, but our attempt at suspension allowed the backward projection to amplify our initial materials in surprising ways. And it should be a surprise, given the extreme conditions of space. So as we worked on this book, music curved the fabric of thought in peculiar ways, attracting certain systems to spiral toward its being while leav- ing others adrift in the dark. Since we reversed the normal order of things, it is vital not to mistake the curve for the object. Despite the gravitational warp in our thinking, we have no adherence to a particular school of thought, let alone any compulsion to be consistent within a system except a 8 CChhuuaa RReehhddiinngg ppaaggeess__2277..iinndddd 88 44//2277//2211 22::1122 PPMM PRE(INTER)FACE certain eclecticism made coherent by music. Music comes ﬁ rst. Every- thing else is secondary. In fact, music should transform everything in its orbit and destabilize its satellites. It might even smash and fuse them into unfamiliar compounds. Music is the center of gravity in this book. This project, then, is about music. And the underlying question is: What is music? It is not, What makes great music? or What does music mean? or, What is the function of music in society? These are all important questions, but they get in the way of the basic question and in fact cannot be answered without first asking “What is music?” And nothing works better for decluttering the debris of definitions than to rocket music into the vast, contextless expanse of space in order to estrange music’s being. A music for aliens makes for an alien music. ★ ★ ★ B reakfast in Vancouver was the first staging post on our intel- lectual journey. Next stop: lunch in Macau (and yet another napkin), a Friday in 2017. On a hot and sweaty day in May, this tiny island provided an improbable place for us to consider the vast and unbounded dimen- sions of music in space. Yet from the perspective of intergalactic musicology, Macau’s heady cultural mix seemed like the closest thing on this planet to the Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars. Since the mid- sixteenth century, this former Portuguese trading post has served as a strategic hub for Western voyagers on their way to East Asia. Which — is to say, Macau is an interface an apt site for our interstitial mus- ings on alien contact. Media, the points of contact, became the focus of our discussion in Macau. After all, Voyager’s mission would be pointless if its decontextualization of music in space did not promise an entanglement with alterior contexts. Music’s isolation must plug back into a bustling hubbub of mixed messages, missed calls, and strange encounters with alien forms. 9 CChhuuaa RReehhddiinngg ppaaggeess__2277..iinndddd 99 44//2277//2211 22::1122 PPMM