According to Wikipedia's own entry, there are more than 4.8 million articles and counting in the English version alone, making it one of the most exhaustive and ever-expanding resources on the web.
Now, as The Vergereports, one artist is attempting to achieve the seemingly impossible -- and print the entire thing out. In his exhibition From Aaaaa! to ZZZap!, currently showing at the Denny Gallery in New York, interdisciplinary artist Michael Mandiberg is showing work from his Print Wikipediaseries, described as "both a utilitarian visualization of the largest accumulation of human knowledge and a poetic gesture towards the futility of the scale of big data".
Brooklyn-based Mandiberg has created software that collates Wikipedia's entire English database into thousands of book-sized volumes. These unique tomes -- each capturing a chunk of self-contained Wiki knowledge -- will then be uploaded to print-on-demand platform Lulu.com.
Given the herculean task at hand, it's by no means a quick process: the total upload of all 7,600 volumes is expected to take between eleven and fourteen days, giving the general public a chance to watch around the clock on a real-time projector. An automated Twitter account, @PrintWikipedia, will also announce the completion of each book, which visitors can snap up for $80 each.
However, Mandiberg has assured that he won't be printing out the entire collection -- which may be wise, given that another attempt to print out only a few hundred Wikipedia entries resulted in a hefty 2 feet tall hardback. But over 100 physical copies, each containing 700 fact-filled pages, will be available to browse and buy.
The show's title itself is a reference to the abstract "spine poetry" that results from the eclectic span of Wikipedia entries found in each volume. You can find "humanism", for instance, in a book that starts with "Hulk (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)" and ends on "Humanitarianism in Africa" -- perhaps the neatest reflection possible of Wikipedia's all-encompassing vision.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
