“The Downward Spiral” is an album by Nine Inch Nails that is a journey down a road of self-destruction, dysfunction and addiction. It’s an awesome piece of music as a whole. Anyway, this thread isn’t about the substance of the music but rather interpreting the album cover. We had a few people over tonight and we had spotify hooked up to the TV and this album was playing. During the entire length of the album, an image of the album cover was displayed on the screen of my HD tv. It eventually led to some interesting conversations with everybody seeing something just a bit differently.
It was a good time so I thought I’d bring it here and ask for opinions. What does this picture look like to you? What is it a picture of?
That’s funny. And yes it’s just art but there are definitely images that are discernible once your eyesight focuses to see them. Or images that are almost discernible so your mind kind of fills in the blanks. It’s just interesting, is all. Silly, yes, that too.
I really don’t know anything about art, so I don’t know if that’s classified as impressionism, or as modern art, but I like it. I don’t like a lot of modern art that looks like a 5 year old just threw some colours on a canvas, but I do like this painting because it does make you think, and it’s very pleasing to the eye somehow.
And, I’m rambling, but I hope you see what I mean.
Yeah i do. I don’t really know a whole lot about art myself, I don’t think technical knowledge of art as a whole is really needed to have this discussion. It’s just asking for opinions as to what you see when you look at the picture.
Interesting. It’s one of my favorite albums of all time and I kept it in the CD case so I saw it all the time but I never LOOKED at it. In fact before looking at it just now I would have said “it’s a picture of a spiral seashell isn’t it?” No that happens to be the cd itself.
Anyway I need to give it a better look on a big screen. Right now all I can think of is that it just feels like the music and visual art that Trent was doing at the time. It just has a vibe, that’s all.
This is very similar to me. I’ve listened to this album for more than 20 years and never really looked at the picture in depth. I know exactly what you mean about it feeling like the music. The image always fit but it’s completely different when you start to notice the little details of it.
You can wait till later on in the thread to answer (if you don’t want to plant ideas in anyone’s head) but it would be nice to hear the interpretations.
To me, it just looks like your run-of-the-mill random industrial rock album cover with a close-up crop of a rusty door or discolored, weathered wall or something equally gritty feeling. I don’t see anything literal in the image; just a general vibe of grittiness.
Without reading the answers, it looked very industrial to me at first, and I thought the splotch was a helicopter. Then I realized it was something more organic, perhaps something under a microscope. Blood, or some kind of organic fluid. Perhaps oil.
Whatever it is, it’s creepy as fuck. Reminds me of Silent Hill
Maybe “run of the mill random industrial rock album cover” isn’t a fair characterization. It’s just that that type of cover and booklet art, for some reason, is engrained in me as being typical of the era. It very well may be that this album cover itself is responsible for that personal stereotype.
Random selection. Like, how would I interpret the foley editor’s choice of the call of a certain species of bird singing in the sound track of an outdoor scene in a movie. He picked one and said Good Enough.
Interesting… there appear to me to be hairs caught in the black smear, but if you look at the paler areas, there is a pattern underlying the color. It looks almost like blood vessels or maybe scales?
And yes it’s just art but there are definitely images that are discernible once your eyesight focuses to see them. Or images that are almost discernible so your mind kind of fills in the blanks. It’s just interesting, is all. Silly, yes, that too.