Which items would you send into space? Tell us at the bottom of this article.

What if you could communicate with an extraterrestrial? If you had the opportunity to tell them about our world, what would be your message?

In 1977 a team of researchers and scientists, led by the legendary astrophysicist Carl Sagan, compiled 116 images, some music and sounds, and included them in a long-playing record made out of gold. The Golden Record was then sent into space with the two Voyager spacecraft, in the hope that aliens or future human beings would find it and understand who we were.

Today, the Golden Record is deep in space, but its memory lingers on. And even if no E.T. has ever been spotted strolling the Royal Mile, Edinburgh is where the world is going to remember Voyager this month. The city’s Collective Gallery has asked 116 artists (from film-makers and comedians to visual artists) to produce new pieces of work inspired by the original Golden Record images. It’s a light-hearted look at a project that captured imaginations three decades ago.

Times Archive, 1977: The Golden Record

'This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and feelings'

“I love this link between arts and science,” says the American author Ann Druyan, who was creative director of the Golden Record. Druyan chose the music and greetings (in 55 languages) that composed the record. “For me, a long-time music-lover, it was a chance to offer immortality to some of the world’s most beautiful music.”

When the project was over she became Sagan’s third, and last wife. “We had known each other for three years working on the Golden Record. And then, during this beautiful spring of 1977 we declared our feelings to each other.” They married in 1981, and were together until Sagan’s premature death in 1996.

Together, the couple worked on making science widely accessible. One of their biggest achievements was the Cosmos television series, through which Sagan explained, in a widely accessible way, the mysteries of our planet and our place in the Universe. Druyan was a co-writer, and is proud of the series’ worldwide success in the 1980s. “Carl’s most important legacy is the way people all over this planet accessed science, and how he opened their eyes to the values of science,” Druyan says. She is currently writing a new Cosmos series.

Sagan’s work helped humans to understand their planet. Could the Golden Record do the same for aliens? If found, the images representing DNA, scenes of daily life, major mathematical concepts and natural processes could speak for us in a powerful way. The music and sounds selection runs from a clap of thunder to a Bach concerto via Johnny B. Goode.

“There was a very democratic process to choose the music,” Druyan says. “World music was chosen very seriously. We went over the selected artists time and time again. We were trying to be as representative as possible of the great musical tradition of the world.” With luck, potential listeners will appreciate Chuck Berry, Beethoven or Navajo chants. If she could do it again today, Druyan would change only one thing: “I would stand by the music, but I really wish we could have included some Bob Marley! No Woman No Cry would be my choice.”

This is a spotless vision of our world, with no shadow.

Avoiding our darker side, ignoring war, destruction or death, was a deliberate choice. “We discussed whether we would include the very first recording of a battle, or images of concentration camps, to show who we really are. In the end, we decided not to – our machines would probably tell more about us than the record itself, and we thought we would only give the most beautiful part.”

After Nasa received criticism over the nudity on the plaque (line drawings of a naked man and woman), the agency chose not to allow Sagan and his colleagues to include a photograph of a nude man and woman on the record. “How tragic is that!” says Druyan, despairingly.

Does she think that anyone out there will ever listen to the Golden Record? “I want to believe that among the hundreds of millions of galaxies in the universe, someone eventually will. It’s hard to imagine that we are the only ones.”

The Golden Record: Sounds of Earth, Collective Gallery, Cockburn Street, Edinburgh (www.collectivegallery.net 0131-220 1260), until Sept 13 2008.

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