Coming soon: Artist develops software to create print editions of Wikipedia
The entire collection to have more than 7600 volumes
A New York artist’s latest project is part of his larger quest to create a 7,600-volume print edition of Wikipedia that would be sold for $500,000. Michael Mandiberg, who teaches at the College of Staten Island and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, has written software that parses the entirety of the English-language Wikipedia database and programmatically lays out 7,600 volumes, complete with covers, and then uploads them to print-on-demand site Lulu.com.
The upload is expected to take about two weeks and will be projected for gallery visitors from Thursday until July 2.
The exhibition is part of Mandiberg’s ongoing “Print Wikipedia” project.
The very first entry will be the exclamation mark, followed by chess move notation “!!” and a Sacramento dance-punk band called “!!!”.
Call it irony or side effect of technology given that Wikipedia is constantly updated by a huge team of volunteers, the collection will be out of date before it is even available to buy.
