Chaos Control began in November 1992. I was in my Junior year at Emerson College (Boston,
MA) and writing for various local music publications. Because there were
too many bands that I wanted to write about than my editors could ever
use, I decided to start my own zine. Issue #1 of Chaos Control was a small,
8 page black and white photo copied magazine. The lead feature was an
exclusive interview with Trent Reznor, who I met over the Prodigy on-line
service, and other bands covered included Single Gun Theory, Meat Beat
Manifesto, Utah Saints, and D.D.T.
That issue was sold
in a few local record stores, but the majority of the copies were sold
by mail order through on-line promotion. This started me thinking....
Chaos Control was designed on a computer, and distributed mainly to people
with computers. So why bother even printing it? I looked around for tools
that would enable to create an electronic magazine, and selected Hypercard.
After teaching myself the program, I was able to finish the first electronic
issue about three months later. I featured all the articles from the printed
version, plus many more, including interviews with Pigface, Stereo MC's
, and ZIA.
For the next two
years, the electronic Chaos Control evolved. A new issue came out every
few months, and each one had a higher degree of interactivity and a stronger
design. Hypertext has always been an important element of the magazine,
with many of the articles appearing in completely non-linear form. As
modem speeds got faster and people became more accepting of large downloads,
the use of colorful graphics and audio samples from some of the featured
bands started to play a bigger role.
All along, Chaos
Control has just been a hobby. But at the same time, I was using it as
a vehicle to experiment with and promote skills as an interactive designer.
The hard work paid off in the summer of 1994, when was asked by a BMG
rep to create a Chaos Control-style interactive promo kit for Killing
Joke. Shortly after that, I was hired by Sire to create a similar project
for BiGod 20. This lead to a bunch of freelance projects for that label,
including The Cult, Jane Siberry, and Mudhoney.
At about the same
time, it became obvious that the self-contained downloaded format of Chaos
Control needed to change. It could only be viewed on Macintosh computers,
and everyone began talking about publishing on the World Wide Web. So
I taught myself HTML and launched the web version you are looking at now.
At first, I was very discouraged by the limitations in design and interactivity
on the web. But with the advent of frames and Javascrupt I grew happier
with the format.
-Bob Gourley
(founder
of Chaos Control Digizine)
Bob Gourley is available for freelance multimedia work (web sites, games, cd-rom,
enhanced cd, digital photography) - click here
for more information.
Please send all press kits to: Bob Gourley, PO Box 1065, Hoboken, NJ, 07030
Or email : chaoszine@gmail.com
