Print Wikipedia: from Aachen to cylinder printing press

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Print Wikipedia: from Aachen to cylinder printing press is an exhibition by the artist Michael Mandiberg from 2016, for which all German-language articles from Wikipedia , an encyclopedia on the Internet , have been converted into a book.

View of the exhibition.

Emergence

Mandiberg himself started looking at Wikipedia in 2009 because he noticed that articles on contemporary art were missing. In 2015 he printed the English language version of Wikipedia in his Print Wikipedia project , which came to a total of 7,600 volumes and was completely printed out. The project he wanted the large amount of data of Wikipedia also tactile and visually making experience: "When I say that the German-language Wikipedia so many gigabytes includes data that tell you nothing. But we understand how much information is in a book. "

Many people were involved in the installation of Print Wikipedia: from Aachen to cylinder printing press. According to the programmer Jonathan Kiritharan, it was particularly difficult to convert the articles from the online format into a format for printing. Each production step took several days. The source code for the conversion was published on the GitHub online service . The uploading to a book-on-Demand Service required 14 days, a time that shows the gap between "lived and digital time dimension" to Mandiberg since many items may be out of date at this time. The project therefore also showed the difference between digital and analog knowledge, which, among other things, is that digital information can be kept more up-to-date.

Detail of the exhibition.

exhibition

In March 2016, 3406 volumes resulted, 100 of which were printed. The unprinted volumes were mounted on the wall as photo mural as part of the exhibition in Berlin at Import Projects, a non-commercial project room . Volumes with lists of, for example, composers and cultural monuments took up a lot of space .

The haptic experience of being able to touch the books and leaf through them was identified as an advantage of a printed edition . A disadvantage of a printed version is that there are no hyperlinks that can be followed with one click . Instead, one has leaves necessary and in some cases a switch to another band.

Another perspective.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Art project makes Wikipedia accessible as a library. In: Focus . May 30, 2016, accessed January 9, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Jessica Binsch: Print out Wikipedia once, please! In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . May 28, 2016, accessed January 9, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Art project makes German Wikipedia accessible as a library. In: monopoly . May 28, 2016, accessed January 10, 2020 .
  4. ↑ The man who prints Wikipedia. In: The Standard . May 30, 2016, accessed January 9, 2020 .