journal of digital research & publishing - The Sydney eScholarship ...

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for communication. They are vectors of pleasure, they encourage the acquisition of
knowledge, they may play an important role in the formation of identity, they are open to
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of consumption and production, and they form a readily accessible community focus
(Holmes, 2008). Innovative magazines that have diverged from the traditional role of
the coupling of imagery and text and consumer marketing, to promote cultural trends
and social communities in which the publication becomes a work of art itself with special
consideration for paper stock, layout, imagery and typography – the work’s print marking
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Two examples of such publications, Omnibus News and FILE magazine, have used the
mainstream media format of a magazine to produce an artwork in itself and experiment
with the social processes of disseminating information. In 1969 three aspiring underground
magazine publishers (Thomas Niggl, Christian d’Orville, and Heimrad Prem) in Munich
proposed an invitation to the community to submit a contribution (illustration, writing,
poetry, photography) to their publication, titled Omnibus News. Each contributor was
responsible for the cost of generating their submission and in return they were given ten
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200­pages long, a substantial publication (Perkins, 2005). Omnibus News restructured
the formal idea of a periodical or magazine, inverting the traditional relationship of the
editor and contributor. The purpose of the project was to ensure distribution by creating
multiple distribution sources. The magazine promoted concepts of networking, inclusion,
communication and media, that are still relevant and operational in digital media.
Another example of the use of magazines to promote and extend audiences is the 1971
publication titled FILE magazine. The magazine began as a product of an art collective
called General Idea, developed as a soundboard for artistic communities in Canada
(Gangadharan, 2009), continuing the project of mail art. FILE promoted the relational
aesthetic by regularly compiling and publishing an artist’s directory and request list for
artworks to which readers had public access, to connect and interact with others.
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