Born Magazine
January 31, 2001 9:34 AM   Subscribe

Born Magazine : Design, Literature, Together.

Found through The Magnificent Melting Object.
posted by jbushnell (9 comments total)

 

Caveat: of the 185 pieces they have archived on this site, I've only looked at a few, and those gave me sort of mixed reactions. That said, anybody who has read Understanding Comics knows that the twentieth century marks the beginning of a massive cross-pollination between language and design (or between word and image, if you prefer) that shows all signs of proliferating even further in this new century. By imagining "unique forms of expression on the Web" and playing with "the lines between reader and artist, sound and word, motion and image," this site contributes to the generation of forms that will be increasingly relevant to our future, and the awkwardness of some of the pieces there may be just the awkwardness of a baby taking its early steps. (Notice the emphasis on "birth" that proliferates on their index page ("mother.html").)

Relevant?:

"With the foundation of an international moving script, [poets] will renew their authority in the life of peoples, and find a role awaiting them in comparison to which all the innovative aspirations of rhetoric will reveal themselves as antiquated daydreams."

Walter Benjamin, 1928. (Emphasis mine.)
posted by jbushnell at 9:37 AM on January 31, 2001



One of the most interesting thing about the site, as far as I'm concerned, is its functional and unobtrusive use of Flash in the index bar.
posted by jpoulos at 9:44 AM on January 31, 2001


Their Flash-detection script won't let me view the page, even though I have Flash installed (on Linux, but still).
posted by waxpancake at 9:51 AM on January 31, 2001


jbushnell - I noticed when Born was getting its start in 1997, the quality of the "literature" they accepted was far below their current standards- exactly as you said, as a baby taking its first steps. The magazine has improved by leaps and bounds since then, and I've been impressed with how it has continued to explore various ways of presenting writing online.


posted by annathea at 10:54 AM on January 31, 2001


This is my favorite Born Mag piece ever. It requires that you use Netscape 4.x to view it (bad programmers, bad!), but it's worth it. It's the most inventive use of DHTML I've ever seen.
posted by mathowie at 11:11 AM on January 31, 2001


Yes, sum good, sumb ad. Yes, no, yess. Somebody at Bornmag fucked me one dark night, thogh...


"...and of course every vital, free-thinking cultural movement that only the true hipsters know about eventually winds up in a car commercial." - Eugene Chadbourne

j|oseph
The Magnificent Melting Object
posted by Joseph Gurl at 3:07 PM on January 31, 2001


Language is design. A book is inevitably a design object. Words are just pictures of sounds. I wrote an appaling essay on this subject a while ago. It is here. But bear in mind that the end is a little nieve. I wrote it in 2 hours.
posted by davidgentle at 9:41 PM on January 31, 2001


My freshman english teacher had comics in the classroom, "Life in Hell" and stuff. Not the best, but not the worst either.
posted by sonofsamiam at 8:08 AM on February 1, 2001


I've used "Ghost World" in the classroom before.
posted by jbushnell at 11:51 AM on February 2, 2001


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