Aspen Magazine
The McLuhan Issue (#4)
New York City, USA: Roaring Fork Press, 1967
9.5 x 12.5 x .075”
Edition size unknown
Aspen was conceived by former Women’s Wear Daily editor Phyllis Johnson as "the first three-dimensional magazine." Each issue came housed in a customized box or folder filled with materials in a variety of formats, including printed materials, "flexidisc" phonograph records, posters, postcards and reels of super-8 movie film. Each issue had a different editor and designer who took complete control of the periodical. It featured contributions by prolific artists (Peter Blake, Marcel Duchamp, David Hockney, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol), musicians (John Cale, John Lennon, Angus MacLise, Lou Reed), writers (William S. Burroughs, Susan Sontag) and composers (John Cage, Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, La Monte Young).
The McLuhan Issue was designed by Quentin Fiore, who had then-recently collaborated with McLuhan on The Medium is the Massage, a book which Fiore had initiated and which went on to become McLuhan's best seller [below]. The issue came in a box illustrated with a diagram of an electrical circuit and text taken from their collaborative work. The contents included several posters, a flexi-disc record by composer Gordon Mumma, an article about a nature trail for the blind and John Cage's Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse). The latter would also later be included in the SMS Portfolio (a publishing project not dissimilar to Aspen) and as a Great Bear Pamphlet, published by the Something Else Press. The advertisements (which include an early Something Else Press newsletter) were held in a magenta folder inscribed with McLuhan’s theory of effective advertising.
The flexi-disc record features the magnetic tape composition "In Memoriam Edgar Varèse” backed with a live recording of “Horn”, a chance composition with the sound of a french horn whose mute has been fitted with a microphone.
"Quentin Fiore tells me that Aspen Magazine is wild about putting me in one of their boxes. I am the subject of their next issue, issue number 4, the McLuhan edition. Corinne will be amused. The graduate school – I am sure – will not. This will give the Profs at Toronto University a fit. I can hear them now. Pure Commercialism! Undignified! Not professorial! Well that’s their look out.
For each issue Aspen’s editors assemble a mix of recordings, posters, essays and whatnot playing on a particular theme. “Magazine” you know is a very interesting word. It means a storehouse, a cache, typically for explosives. This issue is undoubtedly going to result in fireworks. The last one was on Warhol. This one’s on me. Haven’t seen it yet, but I will. Perhaps next Sunday."
- Marshall McLuhan, 1967
