New York Artist Creating 7,600-volume ‘Print Edition’ of Wikipedia
NEW YORK, June 18 (UPI) — 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 said he spent the past three years designing software to convert the 11.5 million entries on Wikipedia into a print-friendly format that will be uploaded to print-on-demand website Lulu.com in a process visitors to the Denny Gallery can watch as part of his “From Aaaaa! to ZZZap!” exhibition.
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.
“Print Wikipedia is a both a utilitarian visualization of the largest accumulation of human knowledge and a poetic gesture towards the futility of the scale of big data,” the project’s website reads.
Mandiberg said the final product is expected to be about 7,600 volumes, with the contents comprising 91 volumes on its own.
“When I started, I wondered, ‘What if I took this new thing and made it into that old thing?'” Mandiberg told The New York Times. “‘What would it look like?'”
The full set will be available for purchase on Lulu.com for $500,000.
“It’s not every day someone comes to you and says, ‘I’d like to make a printed inventory of the largest storehouse of human knowledge in English, and would like to use your website.'” said Dan Dillon, vice president of Lulu.com.
