Petite histoire de la couverture de l’album Unknow Pleasure de Joy Division
Unmapped Pleasures : from Pulsar Signal to Post-Punk Icon | Big Think
▻http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/known-pleasures-from-pulsar-signal-to-post-punk-icon
A previous generation of teenagers swooned over Tolkien’s map of Middle-Earth, a finely detailed escapist fantasy. For young people in the early ’80s, the Unknown Pleasures cover served as the exact opposite: a negative image, literally as well as figuratively, doubling as a blind map of their disaffection. The lack of context added to its mystery, conjuring up an undiscovered country in harsh duochrome, one that this generation could truly call its own.
The album deliberately lacked any indication of the image’s context. Yet the image does have a history and a meaning, most of it well known. Fascinatingly, its earliest origins were uncovered only last month, in an article in Scientific American, of all publications. The image represents a sound landscape, but not from any part of the album itself. It is the visual rendition of the radio signal emitted by CP 1919, the very first pulsar ever discovered, on 28 November 1967.