The vinyl frontier: why do we keep sending music to outer space?

Sonar festival is beaming cutting-edge dance music to an exoplanet 12 light years from Earth. But can such experiments ever be more than hubris?

What item would you choose to sum up humanity if you were, like Captain James T Kirk of the Starship Enterprise, seeking out new life and new civilisations? A "five items or less" sign from a supermarket, with a note explaining why it should be "fewer"? Maybe a selection of press cuttings about the Greggs sausage roll Jesus controversy, summing up both humanity's silliness and its capacity for overreaction?

Of course you wouldn't. You'd do what the Barcelona electronic music festival Sonar has done to mark its 25th anniversary: send out 33 separate 10-second clips of music by electronic artists such as Autechre, Richie Hawtin and Holly Herndon.