DOCSLIB.ORG

SPECTRES of the NEW REALM Project Documentation Joseph Gilling

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
SPECTRES of the NEW REALM Project Documentation Joseph Gilling SPECTRES OF THE NEW REALM Project Documentation Joseph Gilling Copyright © 2021 Joe Gilling Music. www.joegillingmusic.com Figure 1: Gilling, Joe. Spectres of the New Realm. Cover Art. Copyright © 2021 Joe Gilling Music. View online stereo version of the project here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf9LwSwbEpw 1 Table of Contents Synopsis ................................................................................................................... 3 Project Statement ................................................................................................... 4 Failures and the Virtual ......................................................................................... 7 The Haunting Voice .............................................................................................. 10 University of Brighton: 6.1 Project Setup ......................................................... 13 Equipment Used & Signal Processing .............................................................. 17 Mind Map ................................................................................................................ 18 Work-In-Progress Notes ...................................................................................... 19 Steinberg Cubase Project File ........................................................................... 20 Adobe Premiere Pro Project File ....................................................................... 21 Reading Notes ....................................................................................................... 22 Bibliography ........................................................................................................... 25 2 Synopsis Custom 6.1 surround sound array. Projected visuals. Spectres of the New Realm is an intense and immersive experience which combines sonified data, near-defunct audio/video, and saturated human voices. The work illuminates the hidden world of digital culture. Data mining. Bots. Fake news. Information overload. Documentation obsession. All-encompassing noise, crackle, bleeps, and voices fill the space. A means of reviving dead media. An awakening to the future. References to the project under alternative working titles may be found throughout this documentation. 3 Project Statement The glitch materialised out of silence, growing with exponential technological consumerism. However, it will always remind us of the imperfections of human endeavours.1 Spectres of the New Realm documents a state of modern living. Digital culture today is overwhelming and heavily saturated with information. The human brain was primitively not built for the vast cataloguing of digital data as it does now. The audio/visual piece reveals the hidden mechanics which mediate our everyday virtual interactions. It bombards the viewer with striking colours, shapes, and textures. The piece questions what the future means now, when we have effectively lost our ability to rationalise futurity though our fetishization of archaic aesthetics and total psychological immersion within the virtual. The work comments on a crisis of over-documentation, as mentioned by Simon Reynolds in his book Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past (2010). The exponential growth of the internet, since the turn of the century, has led to the intertwinement of past/present/future and real/virtual due to digitals total access. I ask what notions of progression look like now, when ‘futuristic’ concepts are typically ideas founded within documentation and media from the past. As I mention in my undergraduate dissertation Haunted by the Glitch (2021), “The internet has provided the ultimate archival space to reminisce and re-contextualise all sound materials, even those once seen as defective.” We now seem to spend more time looking back than we do looking forward. The sonic artefacts once seen as ‘by-products’ of recorded sound are now used by artists as the primary media for compositions. By personally using and organising these materials, and purposefully creating new ones, I critique and humour what it means to be modern now. I do not produce as a way of reviving the past with nostalgic romanticism, but more with concern as to where we go from here. Mark Fisher’s book Ghosts of My Life (2014) reiterates these eerie thoughts - haunted by futures which failed to happen. Artists such as Burial, whom Fisher also writes of, influenced the ways in which I produced this composition. I take sampled ethereal voices, mysterious dark drones, and sounds of corrupted technology to form a piece not necessarily about the future/present now, but a future which will always seem to be slightly out of reach. The project was created using a variety of sound sources which either intentionally contained ‘errors’ or happened to adhere to the glitch aesthetic due to the nature of their 1 Young, Rob (Ed.) Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music. Continuum, London. 2002. p.49. 4 existence. My main source of audio inspiration came from a glitch-producing technique whereby one runs digital files in playback formats which differ from the file types. For example, I converted images, software programmes, and text documents into raw data which could then be sonified using the freeware Audacity. Other sonic materials used included: hardware artefacts (such as vinyl crackle), damaged compact discs, white noise, computational hiss, and feedback. One of the concurrent themes throughout the piece is the use of sampled voices. I will not reveal the exact source of these in order to uphold personal artistic license, however choices were conceptually appropriate, often political, and essentially hauntological - morphing and reviving sounds and spirits, spectres if you like, from the captured past. Structurally, the piece is sporadic, harsh at times, beautiful at others, overwhelming, and often familiar in a strange techno-relational sense. Motifs emerge briefly before undergoing a process of complete destruction. Rhythms form out of recognisably atonal and typically non-melodic materials. The timbres created as a result of extreme layering and collaging, leaves audiences feeling overloaded with information and sensory stimuli. A feeling of optimism is proposed – perhaps with greater self-awareness we can change the destination ahead. The low-fidelity and muddy distortion throughout makes listeners pay close attention to what they are hearing as they attempt to comprehend the ghostly vocals and abstract tones approaching them. Visually, the work heavily distorts, corrupts, and manipulates found/sampled moving images. I was inspired by artists such as Max Cooper who often combines organic shapes and textures in a very digital way. Furthermore, the German musician and visual artist Carsten Nicolai, better known as Alva Noto, influenced my visual aesthetics with his harsh, glitchy, and fragmented creations - most recently re-released online for his 2018 album Unieqav. Spectres of the New Realm features pulsating, microbiological, and rich textural imagery. The intense viewing process develops around flickering colours and patterns, symbolic with RGB glitch art released around the turn of the millennium. Disturbing human-like forms appear throughout the piece, acting as a cultural zeitgeist figure, only just recognisable, after falling into and loosing oneself within the virtual. I experiment with foreground/background, collaging different sections together before breaking them down into the smallest of particles. Playing with synchronicity as well as asynchrony enhances the auditory experience by combining the power of 6.1 sound with visuals, accurately reflecting the unpredictable and uncontrollable nature of the digital medium and subsequent glitch. When processing the images, I used a combination of in-the-box saturation and disintegration techniques as well as more unorthodox approaches. For example, I observed the results of using a hexadecimal code editor. This software allows a user to edit the binary data which 5 constitutes a digital file. By adjusting small sections of code, unusual and strange alterations are made to the playable file. Using a custom 6.1 surround sound array enabled me to spread sound to fill the room, immersing the audience within my constructed world and enhancing the unexpected through turbulent and disorderly speaker functionality. Voices move around and behind listeners, reiterating the ‘noise’ of information found online. I found myself inclined to characterise this typically unpleasant aesthetic due to the writings of James Bridle within his 2018 book New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future. Bridle argues that whilst we have the technological capabilities to collect and compile more and more data about life on earth, we know ever less about it. A dangerous fallacy is revealed - we both model our own minds on our understanding of computers and believe they can solve all of our problems. The idea that one can produce a machine with greater cognisance than its creators is hindered by a non-humanly ability to have access to all available knowledge. AI/AR/VR technologies will only increase human submersion into the virtual as they become more refined in years to come. As we continue to live in a digitalised post-truth era, the future begins to look ever more dystopian. However, Spectres of the New Realm does not leave an audience in a place of defeat in the wake of technological innovation. Hope is found within greater education and understanding of our reliance on the
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Some Albums to Keep Your Toes Warm This October
    Some Albums To Keep Your Toes Warm This October Bittles‘ Magazine | Record Review As Autumn wraps her chilly arms around the country we look to music for the comfort that we can no longer get from happiness or the sun. Luckily, this time of year tends to be when great new bands get off their asses and go out on tour, while it also seems like there is another fantastic new album to delight us every single day. By JOHN BITTLES In fact, there are so many great new releases this month that there is absolutely no chance of squeezing them into one single article. This week alone I will be reviewing Caribou, Gui Boratto, The 2 Bears, A Winged Victory For The Sullen, and tons more. While, next week we’ll have new albums by Slam, Distal, Huxley, DJ Koze among others. So, make yourself comfy, turn off the phone, geta nice glass of wine, and let us begin. As lead single ›Can’t Do Without You‹ won both our hearts and minds this summer it is only fair to commence with ›Our Love‹, the much anticipated follow-up to ›Swim‹ by Caribou. The aforementioned ›Can’t Do Without You‹ opens proceedings in, sadly, edited form, yet that doesn’t stop it from being one of the most touchingly beautiful four minute pop song you are likely to hear all year. Next track ›Silver‹ keeps the emotional trance elements to the fore, while alternate sounds are explored with ›All I Ever Need‹ utilizing UK Garage style bass over Dan’s falsetto and the title track›‹ recalling a time when the Es were good, and hugging strangers was par for the course.
    [Show full text]
  • Cancel Culture: Posthuman Hauntologies in Digital Rhetoric and the Latent Values of Virtual Community Networks
    CANCEL CULTURE: POSTHUMAN HAUNTOLOGIES IN DIGITAL RHETORIC AND THE LATENT VALUES OF VIRTUAL COMMUNITY NETWORKS By Austin Michael Hooks Heather Palmer Rik Hunter Associate Professor of English Associate Professor of English (Chair) (Committee Member) Matthew Guy Associate Professor of English (Committee Member) CANCEL CULTURE: POSTHUMAN HAUNTOLOGIES IN DIGITAL RHETORIC AND THE LATENT VALUES OF VIRTUAL COMMUNITY NETWORKS By Austin Michael Hooks A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree of Master of English The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Chattanooga, Tennessee August 2020 ii Copyright © 2020 By Austin Michael Hooks All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT This study explores how modern epideictic practices enact latent community values by analyzing modern call-out culture, a form of public shaming that aims to hold individuals responsible for perceived politically incorrect behavior via social media, and cancel culture, a boycott of such behavior and a variant of call-out culture. As a result, this thesis is mainly concerned with the capacity of words, iterated within the archive of social media, to haunt us— both culturally and informatically. Through hauntology, this study hopes to understand a modern discourse community that is bound by an epideictic framework that specializes in the deconstruction of the individual’s ethos via the constant demonization and incitement of past, current, and possible social media expressions. The primary goal of this study is to understand how these practices function within a capitalistic framework and mirror the performativity of capital by reducing affective human interactions to that of a transaction.
    [Show full text]
  • May 18, 2016 for Immediate Release WATCH MODERAT's “RUNNING
    May 18, 2016 For Immediate Release WATCH MODERAT’S “RUNNING” VIDEO https://youtu.be/tVawpT44Hrk MODERAT KICK OFF NORTH AMERICAN TOUR THIS FRIDAY MODERAT’S III OUT NOW VIA MUTE/MONKEYTOWN ModerAt, the alliance of electronic heavy weights, Modeselektor and AppArAt, kick off their North American tour in support of new album, III, this Friday in New York. They’ll be joined throughout by longtime creative collaborators, PfadfiNderei, who will take the reins on visual production. Last week, Moderat announced the release of the album’s second single, “RuNNiNg,” which presents a highly emotive kind of pop, built for dancing, but never simple. Today, the trio reveals the single’s visual accompaniment, directed by JAkob GruNert. Grunert uses the incessant momentum of “Running” to narrate a pilot’s final flight in the Mojave Desert. After abandoning his plane in an aircraft boneyard, the pilot grapples with the frailty of purpose and the pursuit of rebirth. The story goes hand-in-hand with Apparat’s description of “Running” in that the song is about being part of a mass that constantly needs to move to function, but a mass that’s not deciding directions by itself. Mute/MoNkeytown will release “Running,” featuring the exclusive b-side, “90% WAsser,” on May 20th. The digital bundle includes remixes by Shed and KiNK. The “RuNNiNg” 10”, available July 1st, will feature both remixes, and the “RuNNiNg” 12”, available July 15th, will feature the original track and exclusive b-side. WAtch “RuNNiNg” Video – https://youtu.be/tVawpT44Hrk ListeN To “RuNNiNg (Shed Remix)” – https://souNdcloud.com/moNkeytowNrecords/moderAt-ruNNiNg-shed-remix/ “RemiNder” Video – https://youtu.be/cJwsNUoazUg ModerAt Tour DAtes (tix oN sale via www.moderat.fm.): Thu.
    [Show full text]
  • Some Albums to Keep Your Toes Warm This October Pt 2
    Some Albums To Keep Your Toes Warm This October Pt 2. Bittles‘ Magazine | Record Review I was arm-wrestling a tiger the other day (my editor told me I had to make the beginning of my articles more exciting) when I suddenly realised that I had no time for such frivolity as I had some great albums to review. Quickly admitting defeat, I retreated to my listening studio (bedroom) and immersed myself in some of the fantastic records that will be hitting the record store shelves this October. By JOHN BITTLES We have the UK house of Huxley, the indie bleakness of Grouper, the disco diva-isms of Munk, the techno bass of Distal and so much more. But really, in a month when there is, finally, a new album by Glaswegian duo Slam, there is only one place we can begin. Stuart McMillan and Orde Meikle have long been established as bona fide legends of the house and techno scene! Their record label Soma is over 400 releases old, their DJ sets at clubs like The Sub Club and The Arches in Glasgow are discussed with an air of awed reverence, and, as Slam, the duo have released some of the finest electronic music known to man. And now, in the year 2014 they give us their first album in seven years with the deep and moody brilliance of Reverse Proceed. The cinematic ambience of Tokyo Subway, Visual Capture and the title track open proceedings and are the perfect introduction to the deliciously deep sounds to come. In fact it’s not until the techno futurism of Synchronicity that we even get our very first sign of a beat.
    [Show full text]
  • The Idea of Mimesis: Semblance, Play, and Critique in the Works of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W
    DePaul University Via Sapientiae College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences 8-2012 The idea of mimesis: Semblance, play, and critique in the works of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno Joseph Weiss DePaul University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd Recommended Citation Weiss, Joseph, "The idea of mimesis: Semblance, play, and critique in the works of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno" (2012). College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations. 125. https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd/125 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Via Sapientiae. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Idea of Mimesis: Semblance, Play, and Critique in the Works of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy October, 2011 By Joseph Weiss Department of Philosophy College of Liberal Arts and Sciences DePaul University Chicago, Illinois 2 ABSTRACT Joseph Weiss Title: The Idea of Mimesis: Semblance, Play and Critique in the Works of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno Critical Theory demands that its forms of critique express resistance to the socially necessary illusions of a given historical period. Yet theorists have seldom discussed just how much it is the case that, for Walter Benjamin and Theodor W.
    [Show full text]
  • The Work of Mourning 1St Edition Ebook Free Download
    THE WORK OF MOURNING 1ST EDITION PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Jacques Derrida | 9780226502496 | | | | | The Work of Mourning 1st edition PDF Book Derrida, Jacques. Gilles Deleuze Anyone who still thinks that Derrida is a facetious punster will find such resentful prejudice unable to survive a reading of this beautiful work. In each case, he is acutely aware of the questions of tact, taste, and ethical responsibility involved in speaking of the dead--the risks of using the occasion for one's own purposes, political calculation, personal vendetta, and the expiation of guilt. The book, gathered as a whole, essentially marks the end of an important era in the history of Western philosophy, it was the era of existentialism, phenomenology, structuralism, post-structuralism, Marxist theory, and deconstruction. Diomed Xanthus rated it really liked it Jun 20, Books by Jacques Derrida. Add to Basket. But he also inspires the respect that comes from an illustrious career, and, among many who were his colleagues and peers, he inspired friendship. Alissa Bourbonnais rated it it was amazing Sep 16, R Justin rated it it was ok Jun 06, New Hardcover Quantity Available: 2. With his words, Derrida bears witness to the singularity of a friendship and to the absolute uniqueness of each relationship. Jacques Derrida. More Details AM rated it it was amazing May 27, Showing He is aware of the questions of tact, taste and ethical responsibility involved in speaking of the dead, and the risk of using the occasion of death for one's own reason. With his words, Derrida bears witness to the singularity of a friendship and to the absolute uniqueness of each relationship.
    [Show full text]
  • Exploring Queer Expressions in Mens Underwear Through Post Internet Aesthetic As Vaporwave
    Mens underwear :Exploring queer expressions in mens underwear through post internet aesthetic as Vaporwave. Master in fashion design Mario Eurenius 2018.6.09. 1. Abstract This work explores norms of dress design by the use of post internet aesthetics in mens underwear. The exploration of underwear is based on methods formed to create a wider concept of how mens underwear could look like regarding shape, color, material and details. Explorations of stereotypical and significant elements of underwear such as graphics and logotypes has been reworked to create a graphical identity bound to a brand. This is made to contextualize the work aiming to present new options and variety in mens underwear rather than stating examples using symbols or stereotypic elements. In the making of the examples for this work the process goes front and back from digital to physical using different media to create compositions of color, graphic designs and outlines using transfer printer, digital print, and laser cutting machine. Key words: Mens underwear, graphic, colour, norm, identity, post internet, laser cut. P: P: 2 Introduction to the field 3 Method 15 What is underwear? 39 Shape, Rough draping Historical perspective 17 Male underwear and nudity 41 From un-dressed to dressed 18 Graphics in fashion and textiles 42 Illustrator sketching 19 Differencesin type and categories of mensunderwear 43 shape grapich design 2,1 Background 3.1 Developement 45 collection of pictures 49 Colour 20 Vaporwave 50 Rough draping Japanese culture 21 Mucis 55 Rough draping 2 22
    [Show full text]
  • RE-ANIMATING GHOSTS MATERIALITY and MEMORY in HAUNTOLOGICAL APPROPRIATION Abstract
    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FILM AND MEDIA ARTS (2019) Vol. 4, Nº. 2 pp. 24-37 © 2019 BY-NC-ND ijfma.ulusofona.pt DOI: 10.24140/ijfma.v4.n2.02 RE-ANIMATING GHOSTS MATERIALITY AND MEMORY IN HAUNTOLOGICAL APPROPRIATION Abstract This research examines the spectrality of an- MICHAEL PETER SCHOFIELD imation and other media based on the photo- graphic trace. Using diverse examples from pop- ular culture and the author’s own investigative practice in media art, this paper looks at how ar- chival media is re-used and can be brought back to life in new moving image works, in a gesture we might call hauntological appropriation. While sampling and re-using old materials is nothing new, over the last 15 years we have seen an ongoing tendency to foreground the ghostly qualities of vintage recordings and found foot- age, and a recurrent fetishisation and simula- tion of obsolete technologies. Here we examine the philosophies and productions behind this hauntological turn and why the materiality of still and moving image media has become such a focus. We ask how that materiality effects the machines that remember for us, and how we re- use these analogue memories in digital cultures. Due to the multimodal nature of the author’s creative practice, photography, video art, doc- umentary film and animation, are interrogated here theoretically. Re-animating the ghosts of old media can reveal ontological differences between these forms, and a ghostly synergy be- tween the animated and the photographic. Keywords: hauntology, animation, memory, media * University of Leeds, United Kingdom archaeology, appropriation, ontology, animated [email protected] documentary 24 RE-ANIMATING GHOSTS MICHAEL PETER SCHOFIELD Every culture has its phantoms and the spectral- how we can foreground their specific materiality, and the ity that is conditioned by its technology (Derrida, haunting associations with personal and cultural memory Amelunxen, Wetzel, Richter, & Fort, 2010, p.
    [Show full text]
  • Saint Jacques: Derrida and the Ghost of Marxism
    Saint Jacques: Derrida and the Ghost of Marxism David Bedggood Introduction For the bourgeoisie, the collapse of "communism" made the world-historic victory of capitalism seem certain. Yet the contradictions of capitalism immediately called the new world order into question as globalisation brought with it what Jacques Derrida calls the "10 plagues". Apologists for capitalism are now fearful of the return of Marx's ghost. George Soros sees the ghost in the form of the anarchy of finance capital. Anthony Giddens sees the ghost in the rise of left or right fundamentalist ideology. Without realising it, they pose the problem in terms familiar to Marxists: the contradiction between dead and living labour and the rise of the dead reclaimed by the living. But is there a way out for capitalism? Jacques Derrida enters the fray with his book Specters of Marx. He returns to Marx, or at least, "one spirit" of Marx in the German Ideology. This is the "spirit" of Marx which became lost to totalitarian Marxism -- the "spirit" rediscovered in the extreme individualism of Max Stirner, who deluded himself that he was a free floating "unique" ego not subject to any social laws. By reclaiming the powers of alienated social being from the Hegelian god, Stirner worshipped his self as his personal god. By rediscovering this formerly unnoticed "spirit" of Marx, Derrida claims to find a way out of capitalism's plagues with the call for a "new International". Not a Marxist International on the side of living labour, but rather a reworked messianism of the religion of the abstract ego.
    [Show full text]
  • Metamodernism and Vaporwave: a Study of Web 2.0 Aesthetic Culture
    Nota Bene: Canadian Undergraduate Journal of Musicology Volume 14 | Issue 1 Article 3 Metamodernism and Vaporwave: A Study of Web 2.0 Aesthetic Culture Nicholas Morrissey University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Recommended Citation Morrissey, Nicholas. “Metamodernism and Vaporwave: A Study of Web 2.0 Aesthetic Culture.” Nota Bene: Canadian Undergraduate Journal of Musicology 14, no. 1 (2021): 64-82. https://doi.org/10.5206/notabene.v14i1.13361. Metamodernism and Vaporwave: A Study of Web 2.0 Aesthetic Culture Abstract With the advent of Web 2.0, new forms of cultural and aesthetic texts, including memes and user generated content (UGC), have become increasingly popular worldwide as streaming and social media services have become more ubiquitous. In order to acknowledge the relevance and importance of these texts in academia and art, this paper conducts a three-part analysis of Vaporwave—a unique multimedia style that originated within Web 2.0—through the lens of a new cultural philosophy known as metamodernism. Relying upon a breadth of cultural theory and first-hand observations, this paper questions the extent to which Vaporwave is interested in metamodernist constructs and asks whether or not the genre can be classed as a metamodernist text, noting the dichotomy and extrapolation of nostalgia promoted by the genre and the unique instrumentality it offers to its consumers both visually and sonically. This paper ultimately theorizes that online culture will continue to play an important role in cultural production, aesthetic mediation, and even
    [Show full text]
  • A Life in Stasis: New Album Reviews
    A Life In Stasis: New Album Reviews Music | Bittles’ Magazine: The music column from the end of the world With the Olympics failing to inspire, it can seem as if the only way to spend the long summer months is by playing endless rounds of tiddlywinks, or consuming copious amounts of Jammy Dodgers. But, that doesn’t have to be the case. There is a better way! For instance, you can take up ant farming, as my good friend Jeffrey has recently done, or immerse yourself in the wealth of fantastic new music which has recently come out. Personally, I would recommend the latter. By JOHN BITTLES In the following column we review some of the best new albums hitting the shelves over the coming weeks. We have the shadowy electronica of Pye Corner Audio, pop introspection by Angel Olsen, the post dubstep blues of Zomby, some sleek house from Komapkt, Kornél Kovács and Foans, the experimental genius of Gudrun Gut and Momus, and lots more. So, before someone starts chucking javelins in my direction, we had better begin… Back in 2012 Sleep Games by Pye Corner Audio quickly established itself as one of the most engaging and enthralling albums of modern times. On the record, ghostly electroncia, John Carpenter style synths, and epic, ambient soundscapes converged to create a body of work which still sounds awe-inspiringly beautiful today. After the melancholy acid of his Head Technician reissue last month, Martin Jenkins returns to his Pye Corner Audio alias late August with the haunted landscapes of the Stasis LP.
    [Show full text]
  • Visual Metaphors on Album Covers: an Analysis Into Graphic Design's
    Visual Metaphors on Album Covers: An Analysis into Graphic Design’s Effectiveness at Conveying Music Genres by Vivian Le A THESIS submitted to Oregon State University Honors College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Honors Baccalaureate of Science in Accounting and Business Information Systems (Honors Scholar) Presented May 29, 2020 Commencement June 2020 AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF Vivian Le for the degree of Honors Baccalaureate of Science in Accounting and Business Information Systems presented on May 29, 2020. Title: Visual Metaphors on Album Covers: An Analysis into Graphic Design’s Effectiveness at Conveying Music Genres. Abstract approved:_____________________________________________________ Ryann Reynolds-McIlnay The rise of digital streaming has largely impacted the way the average listener consumes music. Consequentially, while the role of album art has evolved to meet the changes in music technology, it is hard to measure the effect of digital streaming on modern album art. This research seeks to determine whether or not graphic design still plays a role in marketing information about the music, such as its genre, to the consumer. It does so through two studies: 1. A computer visual analysis that measures color dominance of an image, and 2. A mixed-design lab experiment with volunteer participants who attempt to assess the genre of a given album. Findings from the first study show that color scheme models created from album samples cannot be used to predict the genre of an album. Further findings from the second theory show that consumers pay a significant amount of attention to album covers, enough to be able to correctly assess the genre of an album most of the time.
    [Show full text]