The goal is to make it the "vault" of recorded music. The structure can withstand 300 meters under the snow and even a nuclear explosion.
On an island between the North Pole and Norway is being built a "doomsday vault", a structure with the aim of preserving the world's most beautiful songs in view of a hypothetical end of the Earth. The Global Music Vault, led by Oslo-based Elire Management Group, claims the building could last for at least a thousand years buried under about 300 meters of snow in the Svalbard archipelago. The structure would also be able to withstand the electromagnetic pulses of a nuclear explosion.
A bunker in the North Pole will save music from the end of the world
According to Billboard, the building is expected to use specialized technology, developed by data storage and preservation experts at Norwegian company Piql, consisting of binary encoding and high-density QR codes written on optical film. "We don't just want to protect a certain genre and era," said Global Music Vault CEO Luke Jenkinson when talking about the catalog of songs that will be placed in the "vault."
The idea is that each nation could submit proposals for songs that should be placed in the super-strong facility. The selection could also be made through a public vote. The goal is to have the vault operational by early 2022. For preservation, it will start with indigenous music styles, which will be the first to be included in the archive, followed by pop and other genres. "We want the nations and regions of the world to take care of the music that is being deposited," Jenkinson added.
According to the Global Music Vault, the Svalbard region is the ideal location for the facility due to its cold and dry climate. That's also why the island group already houses both the Arctic World Vault, which stores historical and cultural artifacts and data from around the world, and the Global Seed Vault, a physical "backup" to protect the planet's crop diversity. The area is classified as demilitarized and therefore in principle cannot be involved in conflict.
The project to preserve music from the end of the world is interesting and ambitious. Remaining on the theme of harmony, some researchers of the MIT have instead discovered that even spiders can make music.
Stefania Bernardini