To call Visionaire a magazine is like calling Lawrence of Arabia a movie. They take the medium and elevate it to another level — literally. Oftentimes the issues aren’t even books, printed on paper or even contain readable text. For instance, some “issues” have included the Sound Issue (53) which consisted of five 12″ vinyls featuring sounds pieces by artists like U2, Cat Power and Yoko Ono and came with a MINI Clubman portable record player (the battery operated toy car drives around the vinyl and plays the sounds). Or their Light Issue (24) which consisted of twenty-four large-format transparencies self-contained in a fully-functional light box, curated by Tom Ford and featuring artists like Sam Taylor-Wood, Andreas Gursky, Christopher Bucklow, Peter Saville and Hayao Miyazaki. It was the first battery-operated publication.

For their latest issue, #57, they have collaborated with Smart car and designed an electric calendar which displays 365 different pieces (a new creation each day) for 2010. Artists were selected by guest curators like MoMa’s Klaus Biesenbacj, architect Zaha Hadid, fashion designers Marc Jacobs and Raf Simons, and actresses Natalie Portman and Tilda Swinton. The stable of artists contributing include Olafur Eliasson, Agathe Snow, Bruce Nauman, Adel Abdessemed, Cao Fei, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Gabriel Orozco, Gelitin, Guyton\Walker, Kalup Linzy, Kaws, Maurizio Cattelan, Nathalie Djurberg, Paul Chan and even Steve McQueen, to name but a few.

As the issue was sponsored by Smart, Visionaire 57‘s electric plug is shaped like the Twofour roadster. Nice touch. 4,000 copies are now available for $295.

Hit the Jump to see videos of two more Visionaire issues…