Blog #6

I wrote my paper about Radiohead’s unreserved album Hail to the Thief, so for this blog I chose to analyze their main website. http://radiohead.com/deadairspace/
Hail to the Thief’s album cover could grab the attention of anyone who is easily intrigued by bright colors, but once you take a closer look at the jumble of information it contains, you can find yourself analyzing it for hours. When you pop in the CD, that’s it; anything you may have been planning on doing previously pales in comparison to listening to it ten-thousand times on repeat. So with all of the artistic ability and inventiveness this band somehow obtains, I would have thought that their webpage layout would be a little more… complex. Dead Air Space is definitely a fitting subtitle for its stark, black background, white text, and occasional rainbow color coordinated links. If you were glancing at this site with no past knowledge of this band, you would not assume that they exuded artistic inclination. Now links to other areas in the webpage give them a little more credibility, with more intricate graphics. In actuality, all they intended to use their official website for was to spread awareness on pressing issues, from human trafficking to voting. They have links to other websites about the band, tour dates, and merchandise (the usual substance found on a band’s online advertisement), but they utilize it more as a place to educate people. They don't even have a full picture of themselves on the site, but this is very representative of Radiohead. They have never been one for the public eye. Their extreme activism is the only exception of the relative mystery this band has, and this webpage portrays that to, a, tee.
Radiohead has definitely taken advantage of the power image can have in depicting a concept or story. It’s hard to say just one thought or the other; that words accomplish expressing a message better than images, or vice versa. While words can thoroughly describe a thought, images make us view them with a completely different way of thinking. Images can also leave just as much to the imagination as words too. It just all depends on the context. For example, if you want to portray the shock-value of the incident of 9/11 more effectively, a picture might be better, because it will make the event feel more realistic and make the viewer connect more to it. Sometimes words prove to be more powerful though, like phrases on picket signs in a protest. Each media also has the ability to mislead. A newspaper article title can misinform readers just like a picture of Brad Pitt standing next to Britney Spears can make the world believe that they are definitely having sex. It all just depends on what the creator is trying to convey, and what they want their audience to feel.