“Mute” is a hybrid print and online magazine dedicated to exploring culture and politics after the net. The publication has existed in print (with a series of accompanying websites) since 1994 but in 2006 it relaunched as “Volume 2” to permit a more dynamic and community-oriented publishing model. At its new location, Metamute. org, “Mute” now manages several types of commissioned and open-publishing content. These run in parallel and feed into a quarterly print title, Mute, which is available for sale or free-to-download in PDF form.
“Mute‘s” primary activity consists of researching and commissioning articles around thematic clusters (the knowledge commons; the global expansion of slums; web 2.0). This thematic editorial is complemented by reviews—of exhibitions, books, conferences, music etc. The magazine also manages several open-submissions areas, namely News & Analysis (where users can highlight and annotate external articles, or indeed publish texts of their own), an image gallery (where users can submit works related to print-issue themes), a calendar (where events can be submitted) and a “torrent” (the Public Library), where larger media files can be up/down-loaded.
Finally, “Mute” has started extending the capabilities of the print-on-demand technologies it uses for its own print magazine to its user-base. Currently, this means users can compile their own Mute by grouping and sequencing articles from anywhere on the site, have them sequenced, enhanced with a table of contents and formatted as PDFs. Over the longer term we aim for this process to make a fully-designed PDF available, which is automatically sent to print and then sent to the user’s registered address.
In line with this the magazine has developed a series of ancillary software projects, all of which attempt to share lessons learned or knowledge gained, tackling the practical issues involved in creating and distributing the magazine. To date, these include Openmute.org (a portal for microsites grouping collaborative-working tools), a print-on-demand consultancy (currently processing an average of three books per month), a print-on-demand gateway (in development at Picopress.net) and an alternative distribution site for independent media (in development at Moreismore. net).

Links: http://www.metamute.org

Mute magazine was founded as an art and technology newspaper in 1994 by Pauline van Mourik Broekman and Simon Worthington but, after four successive format changes, now exists as a hybrid web-print publication at http://www.metamute. org.