Conversation with the Artist: Ann Druyan & Dario Robleto
2014-09-23
In 1977, Ann Druyan, executive producer and writer for the Emmy-nominated series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, became the creative director of the Golden Record. As part of the team of seven headed by her soon-to-be-husband, astronomer Carl Sagan, she helped create a portrait of Earth from natural sounds, images, musical selections, spoken greetings, and even recordings of her own heartbeat and brainwaves that was placed aboard the unmanned space probes Voyager 1 and 2 and launched on a billion-year journey into space.
Thirty-seven years later, Voyager 1 is just now exiting our solar bubble and entering interstellar space. In this program, Druyan joins Dario Robleto in a discussion of the creation of the Golden Record and the relationship between science, art, emotion, and the human desire for long-term preservation.