Rock album cover media, cultural text and object of memory

Abstract

In this article, I intend to reflect on three aspects that characterize album covers, especially those of British and Brazilian rock between the late 1960s and early 1970s: as media – in their images and representations and in the materiality of the object itself; as a cultural text – which articulates semiotic dimensions at various levels; and as object of memory – by translating elements from the past into the present and their respective communicational processes. Through such aspects, I seek to understand this packaging, whose basic function is the mediation between artist, his music, the label and the listener, always crossed by the brands of consumption. As theoretical bases, semiotics of culture, the theory of materialities in communication and memory studies will be used.