Disc-Cover Complexity Trends in Music Illustrations from Sinatra to Swift
Fuente:
arXiv
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| Autori principali: | , , , , |
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| Natura: | Preprint |
| Pubblicazione: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866916982962520064 |
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| author | Fracaro, Nicolas Cecconello, Stefano Conti, Mauro Di Marco, Niccolò Galeazzi, Alessandro |
| author_facet | Fracaro, Nicolas Cecconello, Stefano Conti, Mauro Di Marco, Niccolò Galeazzi, Alessandro |
| contents | The study of art evolution has provided valuable insights into societal change, often revealing long-term patterns of simplification and transformation. Album covers represent a distinctive yet understudied form of visual art that has both shaped and been shaped by cultural, technological, and commercial dynamics over the past century. As highly visible artifacts at the intersection of art and commerce, they offer a unique lens through which to study cultural evolution. In this work, we examine the visual complexity of album covers spanning 75 years and 11 popular musical genres. Using a diverse set of computational measures that capture multiple dimensions of visual complexity, our analysis reveals a broad shift toward minimalism across most genres, with notable exceptions that highlight the heterogeneity of aesthetic trends. At the same time, we observe growing variance over time, with many covers continuing to display high levels of abstraction and intricacy. Together, these findings position album covers as a rich, quantifiable archive of cultural history and underscore the value of computational approaches in the systematic study of the arts, bridging quantitative analysis with aesthetic and cultural inquiry. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_00990 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Disc-Cover Complexity Trends in Music Illustrations from Sinatra to Swift Fracaro, Nicolas Cecconello, Stefano Conti, Mauro Di Marco, Niccolò Galeazzi, Alessandro Computers and Society Human-Computer Interaction Multimedia The study of art evolution has provided valuable insights into societal change, often revealing long-term patterns of simplification and transformation. Album covers represent a distinctive yet understudied form of visual art that has both shaped and been shaped by cultural, technological, and commercial dynamics over the past century. As highly visible artifacts at the intersection of art and commerce, they offer a unique lens through which to study cultural evolution. In this work, we examine the visual complexity of album covers spanning 75 years and 11 popular musical genres. Using a diverse set of computational measures that capture multiple dimensions of visual complexity, our analysis reveals a broad shift toward minimalism across most genres, with notable exceptions that highlight the heterogeneity of aesthetic trends. At the same time, we observe growing variance over time, with many covers continuing to display high levels of abstraction and intricacy. Together, these findings position album covers as a rich, quantifiable archive of cultural history and underscore the value of computational approaches in the systematic study of the arts, bridging quantitative analysis with aesthetic and cultural inquiry. |
| title | Disc-Cover Complexity Trends in Music Illustrations from Sinatra to Swift |
| topic | Computers and Society Human-Computer Interaction Multimedia |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.00990 |