My album cover is one that is more aimed towards young adults due to the theme of the cover and the details in it. This imagery enforces the idea of life travelling down a twisted path, and not being straightforward. The way that this twisted path can be understood as the literal path in life having some unexpected turns, or the way that you begin to see the duality of life as you get older and older.
In my album cover you can see the difference in the colours and the extreme differences in the shades and the tones of the objects in the path. For examples, on the front cover, it illustrates an image of an alley with no obstructions, however, you cannot see the end of the path as there is a bend in the path that leads to behind an unnamed building. This can link back to the idea of the "twisted path". With this image, you can see that the sky has been made a bit darker, emphasising the dark skies. This could be interpreted by the sun/light disappearing and grey skies tend to be associated with rain and bad weather in the future. This could in turn be said to symbolise the future struggles.
My album cover shows the process of life in the form of a path, especially in the front image, where I have also made the floor of this "path darker. This can be said to emphasise the struggles, and the choices you have to make throughout life. The can lead on to the idea of life being dark in places on difficult paths or turns in your life. This can be said to work with Stuart Halls theory, in which he talks about representation and the idea of images being used to assign a meaning to the things that exist and how there is a gap between meaning and reality. Media presents life as something that is easy and something that you can just walk through, as if walking down a marked path, but doesn't mention the forks in this path and the many possible directions that this path may eventually lead you to depending on your choices.
Gender is also quite important when analysing something, along with the idea of race being an important part, and I believe that because I have not chosen a model for this cover and the idea that It does not have any people on this image, it represents equality. As my album cover is all about life and the difficulty and the darkness that someone might feel in their life, it applies to whoever is viewing this imagery, it does not show the struggles of a man or the struggles of a woman, it shows the struggles of life, which applies to all people no matter the race, gender or any other thing about the person, as it is about the person viewing it.
The back of my album cover is an image that features another path and a bin. With this image, I have subtly blurred the image everywhere apart from the bin, drawing focus to the bin. I have done this to represent the focus on the blockades in out path and how instead of choosing to walk around these obstructions, people focus on them to the extent where it is all they see and they cannot get past. I believe that this draws the attention of the people with this inability to see past the obstacles in their path, no matter how far through their life they are, and show them that they always have the path to travel down, as shown in this image, the path is not fully blocked by the bins and the person traveling this path always has the option to walk past this temporary block, no matter how bad it looks.
Throughout the images of this album cover, it constantly refers to the path of life, and I feel that the image in the centre of the album, represents the size of life and the way that at some point in life that there is no way to get past this certain thing and the you will always be stuck behind this obstacle that blocks your view, and this can lead to unexpected changes in life, such as seeing the changes in life in a different way , and accepting them and facing them head on in an attempt to overcome them and continue moving forward.
Your images are effective, though next time I’d really like to see you using people in your representations. Also, be prepared to make more use of the image adjustment tools to give your images more impact. That said, a decent piece that bodes well for future productions.
ReplyDeleteWhen you started to apply critical theory you ran into the problem with having only objects and places on your CD cover. The total absence of gender is not a comment on gender and that is also true of race. As a result you seemed to be dabbing at the edges of discussing representation without actually doing it. It is clear that you can express yourself but you really need to write more like a media student, which means using terminology more carefully.
Grade: C - Still does just enough to get a C grade and your quality of expression will see you to a much better grade if you work on content.