Trap. The combination of the genres of trance and rap usually through sound mixing and editing, has become a staple of parties and festival shows. They share similar use of synth, heavy base and spoken words to create music. But what interests me out of these is the artwork and how the artwork mimics the mixing of themes between rap and techno much in the same way the music does.

Here we have two separate albums, one from a single artist and the other a collection of
trance music from multiple sources. but they both demonstrate characteristics demonstrative of album artwork from this genre. The use of psychedelic shapes and colors tie into the long history and association between trance music and drug culture. They sparse use of text and very modern, usually sans-serif fonts are present here also. There is a feeling of otherworldly-ness to these covers, in a way they try to touch on the shifting adaptive and full feeling that is found in trance.

Here now are some examples of rap album covers. They have radically different themes, pallets, imagery and text. With the theme focusing around "urban" life and it's ups and down, there is use of urban settings mixed in with hard street life, loneliness and the like. this isn't to be mistaken for more popularized rappers that have been stereotyped as the "drugs, guns and women" group. I picked this subset of rap as I see it as a more "pure" form that has mostly stayed away from the influence of other genres ("nas" is a great example of this) This has also lead to there album artwork to maintain the same stylized lettering, with a heavy focus on the artist that was common with earlier records by Public Enemy, Sir Mixalot, Ice-T, etc. Where the trance albums had psychedelic colors, the color schemes are more subdued here using monochromatic color schemes and a more complex presentation. This captures better the type of music these record have: hard, biting, angry music with heavy drums, little treble and a focus on the spoken lyrics.


What we have so far are two different sets of cover art accomplishing two separate things; on one hand, we have rap music and the other we have trance. now when brought together you have music that takes elements from each and can be best described with the word "bangin". But does the artwork follow? Left is a album cover from Cashmere Cat, a premiere dj who specializes in live shows and mixes trap. I chose to start with this one for the fact that it bucks my thesis. The most important thing to remember is that as much as they are blending two previous genres they are changing and adapting and creating new things that are separate and will start to exist in ways its predecessor could not. But we still haven't moved out of the formative years for this music so there are  plenty of examples of the combining I spoke of earlier. The album cover pictured below is an example of how  combining the two different art styles and typography into one piece can work.

On the left we have a dj duo called RUN DMT's latest album cover that uses psychedelic imagery as well as the more moderated pallet for their album. The text is very modern, but the name is a pun on the oldschool rap group called RUN DMC turning it into a reference for the illegal drug DMT. This is on multiple levels a blending of rap and techno culture, and perfect does it job of representing the type of music found on the album.

So does this hold? Guess if the genre is rap, techno of trap of the album covers below and see if you are right.



Album 1

Answer: RAP        

Album 2

Answer: TRAP      

Album 3

Answer: TRAP      
0

Add a comment

In class, we discussed Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics," which is really the seminal work in well, understanding comics.  McCloud discusses just about every, and any aspect of comics that can be conceived, and our discussion on 'gutters' was interesting, as I hadn't read "Understanding Comics" in some ten years.

As an avid comics fan (buff?), I had always been told that Neal Adams was one of the genre-defining comics-book artists of his day (which happened to precede me by some 15 years).  As you can see in the examples to the right, his use of panel arrangement was completely "outside-the-box," to coin a phrase that came up in class.  That is not the interesting part, however.

Trap. The combination of the genres of trance and rap usually through sound mixing and editing, has become a staple of parties and festival shows. They share similar use of synth, heavy base and spoken words to create music. But what interests me out of these is the artwork and how the artwork mimics the mixing of themes between rap and techno much in the same way the music does.

Arguably one of the most recognizable symbols in the Western cultural lexicon, or even that of Eastern cultures, is the silhouette of Mickey Mouse. Popularized in the late 1920s by a series of short films, America’s favorite rodent has come to represent the Walt Disney Studios and the Disney corporation at large.

The above comic by Robert Berry appears in his Ulysses “Seen” adaptation of the James Joyce novel Ulysses.

We watched "The Machine is Us/ing Us" and had an interesting class discussion on whether it was a scholarly work or not. It was not, perhaps, “scholarly”; but it was an argument, and it made me think about the sociology of internet communication.

During our in-class discussion of Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art," the composer brought up gutters, the space in between frames of a comic (or newspaper, cartoon or other media).  In a comic, as McCloud states in the image to the right, gutters "play host to the magic and mystery that are at the very heart of comics."  These gutters are vital, and can serve as more than a space to let the reader's mind wander.

When we talked in class about usability and the internet, it sounded like the conclusion as to what makes a usable website is simplicity. Creating a website to serve a very obvious purpose is the key to usability. But even when a site is usable, there are aesthetics that make a website a more enjoyable experience for the user. Color, formatting, and graphic elements can enhance usability by making a website visually appealing.

In Vitaly Friedman's article "10 Usability Nightmares You Should Be Aware Of," the first item listed is  problematic hidden login links on websites. Friedman uses Backpack as an example because the login link is very small and placed right underneath a block of text that looks like an advertisement, rather than placing the login somewhere else on the page where it can be easily located.

-->

Of the recent readings for this course, I feel most compelled to comment on the writings of Jakob Nielsen. I had heard of him before, touted as the leading expert of usability. A great deal of the discussion in class was devoted to some apparent contradictions between his ethos and one of his now defunct websites. However, I noticed contradictions on the very page we were asked to look at for class.

Professor John Logie teaches us that comics have a place in academia. He teaches it in Visual Rhetoric. Why not? Comics are visual and they are graphic and they are certainly full of rhetoric. Comics teach us to engage ourselves with the comic we are viewing, on our own time, in our own space. Professor Logie teaches that Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" is an essential book to do just that, understand comics.
Blog Archive
Contributors
Loading
Dynamic Views theme. Powered by Blogger. Report Abuse.