Patterns of pop-Reference-Cited by-同舟云学术

Patterns of pop

Published:2022-06-22 Issue:2 Volume:14 Page:
ISSN:1743-1646
Container-title:Popular Music History
language:
Short-container-title:POMH

Author:

Dörfling Christina,Pfleiderer Martin

Abstract

Although the images on the front of album covers contribute to a multimodal experience of popular music, they have up until now rarely been used as a historiographical source. This article aims to add this visual dimension to the historiography of popular music in the GDR by investigating visual patterns within a corpus of 105 album covers produced in the German Democratic Republic between 1964 and 1990 and by comparing them to Western album covers from the same period. Following a theoretical introduction, the political, economic and technological contexts of record production and album cover design in the GDR are described. Inspired by visual discourse analysis and social semiotics, a comparative corpus analysis approach focuses on the depiction of persons, settings and objects on the album covers as well as on their general visual design. The results suggest both a specific visual language that is peculiar to album covers in the GDR and an encompassing transnational imagery of popular music.

Publisher

Equinox Publishing

Subject

Music

Reference38 articles.

1. Alleyne, M. 2014. ‘After the Storm: Hipgnosis, Storm Thorgerson, and the Rock Album Cover’. Rock Music Studies 1/3: 251–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/19401159.2014.949553

2. Arvidson, J. 2007. ‘“To Stitch the Cut…” The Record Sleeve and its Intermedial Status’. In Changing Borders: Contemporary Positions in Intermediality, ed. Jens Arvidson et al., 55–83. Lund: Intermedia Studies Press.

3. Ausbildungsunterlagen. 1978. Ausbildungsunterlage für die sozialistische Berufsbildung, Gebrauchswerber: Spezialisierungsrichtungen: Werbegestalter, Werbemittelhersteller. Berlin: Staatsverlag der DDR.

4. Bäumel, M. 1986. ‘Verpackungs-Kunst. Zur Gestaltung von Amiga-Rockplattenhüllen’. Sonntag. Die Kulturpolitische Wochenzeitung 3/40: 4.

5. Behrens, R. 2001. ‘Parergon, Etui, Cover. Verhüllung des Klangs: zur kritischen Theorie der Warenästhetik von Tonträgern’. In Vom Parergon zum Labyrinth. Untersuchungen zur kritischen Theorie des Ornaments, ed. Gérard Raulet and Burghart Schmidt, 111–32. Wien: Böhlau.