This is an idea that I’ve been kicking around for a long time now, but never to the point where I’m satisfied enough to move forward. I’ll share it now, though, just to get it off my chest.
The aim is to develop a publication that would “come into itself” over the course of assembly. An exercise/experiment in the editorial process, it will be made up of numerous contributions from a variety of participants. Each contributor will receive everything that has come before, and will be given ample time to spend with the whole-to-date, so that the entirety will be internalized prior to the development of a new contribution.
Each new piece will not (necessarily) be a response to the piece directly prior, but instead should be written with a sense of the publication as a whole to date. Contributions are to be understood as anything that will function in print – essays, photography, art, misdirections, musical scores, etc.
And then on to the next person. So that with each contribution the publication grows more unified and more complex. Over the course of the project an organic whole will be built.
There are problems with this structure. It is infeasible, increasingly so with each new contribution.
Is the selection of each contributor the only top-down editorial choice made? And who wants to be the last person to contribute? Straddled with a stitched-together Frankenstein of a magazine, the texts and images all tugging in different directions?
4 responses so far ↓
1 sam // Dec 15, 2007 at 10:38 pm
I’ve wanted to start a mashup magazine for a while… same concept as the music genre, but in printed form.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_%28music%29
2 sam // Dec 15, 2007 at 10:43 pm
This book, Laboratorium, is a great reference… Very self-referential.
http://www.dmbooks.com/product.aspx?productID=2340
3 Pressman // Dec 16, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Never seen that before – can’t grasp its content from the brief description on the website. How would the mashup magazine function? Would the texts be spliced together? Based on theme, or on use of language?
4 sam // Dec 16, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Laboritorium was an exhaustive project where a bunch of artists and designers documented the process of designing the book from start to finish, which then became the book itself. There are photos of people working on the book in their studios and all the emails and correspondence are included too. It’s quite a massive tome if I remember correctly.
I think a mashup magazine would steal content from a lot of other books / magazines. It could play around with different methods of reproduction whether it be a photograph of another layout, a photocopy or simply redrawn by hand. Different designers could steal or change each others content as well. Basically ignoring any sort of copy write restrictions. I think the whole creative commons thing could play a part too.
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