The Importance Of Material Listening-experience In Album Art Design

My Thesis explores interactive experiences with artifacts, more specifically culturally related artifacts in the digital and synthetic environments. More importantly I deal with the interface, equating its worth as a cultural form, and its relationship to content and how we encounter digital media especially music. To acknowledge the interface as a cultural object is to recognize its position as a representation of human worth in a milieu where content is largely metaphysical and immaterial.I believe current existing devices and systems designed to organize music collections and represent digital media do not yet completely sustain the kinds of connotative and emotional connections that past media effortless made. I maintain that music’s cultural importance is diminishing as a result of associations that are the precondition for the assignment of value. I argue, that the result of flawed design hypothesizes based on out molded metaphors and prototypes. My Thesis endeavors to seek answers to why and find sample cases in which digital interfaces may produce for more significant, personally redolent inteactions with the cultural articfacts. My Thesis investigates the nature of experiences with cultural artifacts in the digital environment. Specifically, I am concerned with the interface as a cultural form, and its relationship to content in our encounters with digital music. To speak of the interface as cultural form is to acknowledge its status as a signifier of human value in a world where content is largely immaterial and abstract. I believe current systems designed to manage music collections and represent digital packages do not yet support the kinds of material, connotative associations that did past media, and I argue that these associations are the precondition for the assignment of value with has resulted in music’s cultural importance is diminishing. I argue, is largely the result of flawed design assumptions based on outdated metaphors and paradigms. My Thesis seeks to ask why and find examples in which digital interfaces may provide for more meaningful, personally resonant encounters with the cultural stuff of music.