[Libri] Fw: NYTimes.com Article: Three-Dimensional Magazine Lives Again in Two Dimensions

[Sharon Shaloo]

To the Libri List -- an interesting article about ASPEN magazine -- the
"three-dimensional magazine" that was published from 1965-1971.

Regards,

Sharon

************************************************
Sharon Shaloo, Executive Director
Massachusetts Center for the Book
On the web at www.massbook.org

"There is no frigate like a book" -- Emily Dickinson

> Three-Dimensional Magazine Lives Again in Two Dimensions
>
> December 9, 2002
> By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL
>
> Published 10 times between 1965 and 1971, Aspen billed
> itself as the first three-dimensional magazine. Most issues
> arrived in a notebook-size box stuffed with articles that
> had been printed individually rather than stapled together.
> But it was the nature of its contents that made Aspen
> magazine stand out like a ski lift in a cornfield. Each
> issue was as likely to hold postcards, posters and
> phonograph records as essays. And among the magazine's 235
> contributors were many prominent figures on the 60's
> cultural landscape, including Roland Barthes, John Lennon,
> Marshall McLuhan, Lou Reed and Andy Warhol.
>
> Thirty years after Aspen ceased publication, copies of the
> actual magazines are rarely found outside museum libraries
> and dusty flea-market bins. Now, though, Aspen can be
> viewed on the Internet, where the three-dimensional
> magazine has been digitally reproduced for the
> two-dimensional computer screen with remarkable verve. The
> material was put online last month at Ubu.com/aspen.
>
> Aspen provided a vivid snapshot of its era. The Pop Art
> issue came in a Warhol-designed soapbox. Another issue
> described works by denizens of the Judson Memorial Church
> gallery, a mecca of early performance art in New York. The
> Fluxus issue had conceptual scores by Philip Glass and
> Steve Reich and a LaMonte Young recording. Deborah Wye,
> chief curator of prints and illustrated books at the Museum
> of Modern Art in New York, said, "The accuracy of the
> moment is something that hits you between the eyes when you
> open one of the boxes."
>
> Given Aspen's historical importance, one might assume that
> a digital re-creation of the magazine would become the work
> of a museum. Instead, the online version is a labor of love
> by Andrew Stafford, 48, a San Francisco bookseller who
> gradually amassed a set of the magazines during the 1990's.
> He wanted to share his collection.
>
> "As an example of creative publishing, Aspen is just
> stunning," he said.
>
> Mr. Stafford's project provides a primer in the pleasures
> and pitfalls of putting real-world materials on the
> Internet. But there is no denying that Aspen is an ideal
> candidate for online presentation. At a time when magazines
> are routinely accompanied by compact disks with music or
> computer software, it is easy to overlook how progressive
> Aspen was in packing its issues with the thin plastic
> records called flexidiscs and, in one instance, a reel of
> 8-millimeter film: a truly multimedia magazine.
>
> Adapting the magazine for the Web's multimedia capabilities
> became irresistible to Mr. Stafford. In 1999 he started
> digitizing some of the magazine's printed pages. He
> converted the flexidisc recordings into sound files that
> could be played on a computer and also asked a friend with
> a movie projector to transfer a reel of short abstract
> films by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Robert Rauschenberg and two
> other artists into video files.
>
> Happily, Mr. Stafford did not stop there. He learned
> Web-animation techniques so that he could create
> interactive versions of some exhibits. For instance online
> visitors can flip through the digitized pages of Lennon's
> 1969 diary, playfully created in 1968 (sample entry: "got
> up. went to work. came home. watched telly"), or rotate the
> lines and dots on a page of John Cage's score for "Fontana
> Mix."
>
> Mr. Stafford completed his digitizing effort in 2000, just
> as lawsuits over copyright violations involving online song
> files were reaching the courts. He said, "I became totally
> intimidated by the prospect of breaking about 150
> copyrights." Deterred by the amount of work that would be
> needed to acquire permission to republish all the Aspen
> materials online, he put the project in a drawer. Instead
> he created a free tutorial about Marcel Duchamp, which he
> put online last August at UnderstandingDuchamp.com.
>
> He was soon contacted by the artist's vigilant and unhappy
> rights administrators. So far, he said, he is dodging their
> demand for several thousand dollars. While researching the
> problem, he approached Kenneth Goldsmith, a New York poet
> who has operated UbuWeb, an Internet-based archive of
> experimental poetry and avant-garde works, since 1996. The
> site is at Ubu.com.
>
> Mr. Goldsmith volunteered to put the Aspen project on his
> site, which he did last month.
>
> Despite Mr. Stafford's experience with the Duchamp
> tutorial, Mr. Goldsmith said: "Over the years I've found
> that people only come after you for rights when you're
> making money. Since UbuWeb is completely free, nobody has
> ever really bothered us about rights." He said he removes
> entries when living artists complain, but that rarely
> happens.
>
> "Most artists who find their stuff on UbuWeb are thrilled,"
> he said. Avant-garde artists rarely expect royalties. "They
> want an audience."
>
> He may be right. The editors of several Aspen issues said
> they were pleased that the material was available again.
> Jon Hendricks, who edited the performance-art issue, said,
> "The idea was to get the information out rather than to
> think of it as property." Nor did Jeffrey H. James,
> executive director of the Cunningham Dance Foundation,
> object to audio recordings of the choreographer Merce
> Cunningham on the Aspen site. Mr. James said, "The
> educational value of having Merce's thoughts out there on
> the Web outweighs our motives of ownership."
>
> Still, Mr. Stafford worried that individual contributors
> would force him to remove select entries. He said, "Losing
> just 10 percent of the contributors would reduce its
> usefulness by at least half, so I'm hoping all will
> cooperate."
>
> The ultimate arbiter would probably be Phyllis Johnson, a
> former intimate-apparel editor of Women's Wear Daily who
> created Aspen. But her contributors have lost touch with
> her, and she could not be reached for comment.
>
> Ms. Wye of the Museum of Modern Art was enthusiastic about
> Mr. Stafford's Web site, saying that it achieved the same
> goal as the original magazine: making art available to a
> larger public. (The magazine's circulation was 15,000 to
> 20,000.) She also appreciated having the audio and video
> entries online, noting that even an institution like the
> Modern does not always have turntables and movie projectors
> around.
>
> On the other hand, the Web site does not convey the tactile
> qualities of the real magazines. "You can't imagine how
> beautiful these flexidiscs are in person," Mr. Goldsmith
> said. "An audio file is no substitute for the sensuality of
> vinyl." And Mr. Stafford's straightforward site design
> encourages online visitors to go through each issue in a
> linear fashion, losing the treasure-chest element.
>
> There is one gap in Mr. Stafford's collection, the last of
> Aspen's 10 issues. Recently a book dealer with a complete
> set (asking price: $10,000) offered to mail him color
> copies of its pages. Mr. Stafford said the issue should be
> online by Christmas.
>
> Mr. Stafford said he understood that he would never recover
> a dime from his preservation project. Aspen magazine "was a
> folly," he said, "as is my Web site, I guess."
>
> He continued: "Aspen the magazine never made a penny, I'm
> sure. So Phyllis Johnson and I share that across all these
> years."
>
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/09/arts/design/09ARTS.html?ex=1040493946&ei=1
&en=36131f4f96e276ef
>
>
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