Commercial recordings - CDs, LPs - are familiar objects. However, discussion
about them has often attempted to conceal the fact that, as communicating
objects, recordings pose special problems due to the fact that they unite text,
image, and sound in a material commodity. This thesis examines the role of the
visual in the production, circulation and use of recordings. The album cover is the
primary category of study, with an emphasis on its functioning in relation to the
recording as a sonic and material commodity. The label ECM, a German
company which has been producing recordings since 1969, provides the main
focus in this analysis.
The basis of this investigation lies in the questioning of the assumptions
and categories that have historically guided the activity of cover design and the
discourse about it. Traditionally, recordings have been understandably seen
primarily as sound-carriers; their visual aspects, even when celebrated, are most
often relegated to a peripheral status, despite the fact that in certain contexts the
importance of the visual can overwhelm that of sound. The usual hierarchical
opposition between these elements is here questioned through an examination of
both the marketing of recordings and their circulation and use.
ECM provides a pertinent case through which such questions can be
elaborated. Its visual marketing strategies can be characterised in terms of a
desire for difference. ECM's attempt to set itself apart has resulted in a "look"
which rejects many conventions. It has also resulted in a complex, conceptual
group of visual strategies. In its particular use of landscape photography, blank
space, and gestural markings, ECM constructs ideas of space which relate to the
potential for performativity and creativity. Through the combination of these
strategies, the label deemphasises creative personality of the musical performer
and emphasises the space occupied by the looker/listener. In doing this, it also
questions the traditional boundaries between music and the visual. ECM's covers
cause these categories to become indistinct and allow new conceptions of the
recording as a material commodity to emerge.
One effect of this is a construction of the apprehender's subjectivity that
fails to fit within the marketplace's traditional categories. The thesis considers
how the visual has been implicated in more concrete processes such as the
negotiation of taste and practices of consumption and use. The niche that ECM
attempts to carve out for itself is considered in relation to the tension in the
marketplace between the desire for distinction and the recording as a massproduced
commodity. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/11755 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Holm, Erik |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Format | 16456647 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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