Meet A Magazine That Looks Like A DVD

When Art Basel hit Miami last week pale and posh New Yorkers stood out from South Beach's usual bright mix of the scantily clad. Upon the recommendation of a couple Basel-ites, one an assistant to a major art collector, I checked out NADA--the New Art Dealers Alliance, an art fair of 86 emerging art galleries from around the world. On Friday afternoon I strolled through the vast, warehouse-size space of Miami's Ice Palace where NADA was held from December 6-10. The galleries, lined up in rows of what looked like giant gray office cubicles, were primarily from New York, LA and the UK, with some interesting showings by galleries from Romania and Ireland and a couple great, stand-out galleries from the Netherlands. Twenty countries were represented in all. Most of the art wasn't that great, the kind of stuff that gives you hope of becoming an artist yourself one day. (Anybody could tape a couple dead leaves to the wall).

But I did stumble upon an interesting find outside under the white tents of the art publication area where I came across ASPECT--a magazine in DVD format about new media art. ASPECT covers all art expressed through video and sound. "You can flip through an ArtForum, but you're not going to see moving images," says Michael Mittelman, the founder of ASPECT, himself a Boston-based installation artist who has showed at M.I.T.'s The List.

The DVD-periodicals come out twice a year; each volume showcases 5-6 artists with a voice over by a renowned curator providing historical context to the work. Launched in the spring of 2003, the ten volumes of ASPECT that have since come out explore different themes, such as the constructs of personality and identity to lightheartedness and joie de vivre.

Though ASPECT is very much a passion project by Mittelman and assistant editor Liz Nofziger, also an artist, it has the potential, given the uniqueness and simplicity of its format, to be the ArtForum of new media, providing a platform that fully captures the sound-making, moving images of new media art. Circulation is only 1,000, a result of ASPECT's reliance on word of mouth instead of shelling out for paid advertising. But Mittelman is working on changing that and part of his plan is to reach out to sponsors to advertise, but first he's got to figure out where to find the ad space on a DVD.

Check out ASPECT: The Chronicle of New Media Art here. Volumes sell for $25 each and a two-year subscription for four issues is $80. Just the gift this holiday to give the performance artist in your life.

--Kevin Maney and Andrea Chalupa. □