3PMjournal_2010s2

3pm Journal of Digital Research & Publishing
Interestingly one’s first encounter with the interface of the webpage recreates one’s
encounter when first opening a magazine as the reader’s eyes move across the screen
following images and text. Yet the eye is forced to scroll down in keeping with the context
of the digital experience. From then on the reader’s experience differs and transforms
them from a reader to a user. As Lev Monovich has argued, “a defining feature of new
media digital objects includes modes of representation in which we are interpolated as
users rather than just viewers or readers.’ (Banks, J. and Deuze, 2009:421). In this online
environment cover stars are bought to life, models move, interviewees speak. Our visual
literacy in this virtual magazine relies upon our digital literacy as Richard Lanham asserts
“To be deeply literate in the digital world means being skilled at deciphering complex
images and sounds as well as the syntactical subtleties of words. Above all, it means being
at home in a shifting mix of words, images and sounds.” (Handa, 2005: 198, 200)
Unlike the printed form, the website offers the opportunity for self-directed interaction
(Cranny-Francis, 2005). Readers are not confined by a beginning, middle and end rather
they can move through layers as content is presented in a way that bears more resemblance
to a filing cabinet. They have the choice to open whichever file they so desire. The website is
divided into four distinct sections; Current which files away columns by its leading writers;
Exclusive files web-exclusive fashion editorials; Reader is a file of an edit of the best blogs
on the web; and Loves is a file of recommendations of luxury products by their online
community. This self-directed activity means the reader is actively involved within the
creative community or class who “share a common creative ethos that values creativity,
individuality, difference and merit.” (Florida, 2002: 8) In readers being their own editor in
this digital realm of the magazine they become part of a collective whole. Jefferson Hack,
one of the founders of Dazed and Confused, fittingly describes the relationship between
print and online form, “What Dazed Digital can offer on the web is about the moment.
The printed magazine’s is much more about the collective memory…a souvenir of what’s
happening in the moment.” (Le Masurier, 2010: 28)
Interview- “the new doesn’t necessarily wipe out the old.”
Kurt Anderson, cofounder of Spy and New York columnist //Kurt Andersen, “The Good Old
Boy of Time Inc, “New York, January 23, 2006
Interview Magazine holds a historical place in independent publishing history. Andy
Warhol first published it in 1969. As the ultimate Pop Art gesture, the magazine began
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