DIGIPAK RESEARCH - Interactive elements

David Bowie really saw the potential of digitisation and Web 2.0:

Jump – The David Bowie Interactive CD-ROM

[show]   Screenshot
Developer(s)	ION
Initial release	1994
Operating system	Windows, Macintosh

To coincide with the album's release, Bowie commissioned an "interactive CD-ROM" be produced based on the album. Released in 1994, the JumpCD-ROM gave users a chance to remake Bowie's "Jump They Say" video, remix "Black Tie White Noise," and explore a virtual world based on the album (including "hidden animations, sounds, pictures and other surprises.") It also included four complete music videos and excerpts from interviews with David Bowie about the creation of the video and album.^[27]The CD-ROM was not well received.^[28] Initially Bowie was excited with the project, expecting it to be "fully interactive, and have a nonlinear storyline" and allowing listeners to play it over and over and "never go through the same experience."^[29] The release did not live up to his expectations however, and Bowie was quoted in 1995 saying "I hated it. I absolutely loathed it. ... There were aspects of it I thought had potential, but then again, there was so much information on the disc itself that made the idea of anybody using it interactively a joke. Interactive, as far as I'm concerned, is when the person who's operating the computer has as much to say as what's on the screen. That is interactive. And at the moment, it's just the ABC options. Even the most sophisticated CD-ROMs are just 'Here's the hard information. Now, you can take one of these three steps.'"^[30]

3D in the album artwork:

The album cover, designed by Rex Ray with photography by Tim Bret Day and Frank Ockenfels, depicts the short-haired Bowie persona from the intensely energetic previous album Earthlingexhausted, resting in the arms of a long-haired, more youthful version of Bowie. Indeed, Hours is a much mellower album than its predecessor, and features numerous references to earlier parts of Bowie's musical career (particularly the early 1970s). For the album's initial release, a number of copies featured a lenticular version of the cover, lending a three-dimensional effect to the image.