Print Misplaced Pages is an art project by Michael Mandiberg that included a printed edition of 106 volumes of the English Misplaced Pages as it existed on April 7, 2015. The bound paper volumes, each running 700 pages, represented a fraction of the 7,473 total volumes necessary to render the encyclopedia's extant text on that date. As first shown at the Denny Gallery in New York City, United States, during summer 2015, the project included a display of the spines of the first 1,980 volumes in the set. The 106 printed volumes included only text of the encyclopedia articles: images and references were omitted. Supplementing the printed volumes of encyclopedia articles, additional print volumes included the appendix to all 7.5 million contributors to English Misplaced Pages (in 36 volumes) and a table of contents (in 91 volumes).
From February 24 to May 21, 2016, it was exhibited inside the Charles Trumbull Hayden Library on the Arizona State University Tempe campus, adjacent to the library's conventional encyclopedia section.
Background
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Mandiberg originally conceived the project in 2009 but ran into technical difficulties. They then engaged an assistant, Jonathan Kirinathan, to aid with the programming of the code to compile, format, and upload the entire contents of English Misplaced Pages. The print files were uploaded to book self-publisher Lulu.com and made available for printout as paper volumes.
Mandiberg's motivation was to answer the question, "How big is it?". For a big data entity, its size is on the threshold of what can be perceived as a collection of volumes, but not so large as to overwhelm one's senses, such as the data files of Facebook or the NSA. Katherine Maher, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, described it as "a gesture at knowledge". Wikimedia cooperated with the project and Lulu.com helped fund it.
The task took three years, and the upload process took 24 days, 3 hours and 18 minutes. It was completed on July 12, 2015. PediaPress had attempted to raise money for a full English Misplaced Pages printout on Indiegogo in 2014, with a goal of $50,000 (£30,000), but the project was pulled. The abandoned project had intended to print 1,000 volumes, of 1,200 pages each: a total of 1,200,000 pages, roughly equal to 80 m (260 ft) of shelf space. Mandiberg later assured people that they would not be printing out the entire collection, claiming that an entire collection is not necessary for people to comprehend the true size of Misplaced Pages, and, once people have seen a portion of it, it will help them realize its size. Mandiberg estimates that the printing costs of a full printout would be around $500,000. The Denny art exhibit featured only a selection of printed volumes with about 2,000 other volumes represented as spines on the wall. The show revolved around the actual upload of the print files to Lulu.com.
Influence
Similar art projects have printed part of the German Misplaced Pages (Berlin, 2016) and the Dutch Misplaced Pages (Ghent, 2016).
See also
- 2015 in art
- de:Print Misplaced Pages: from Aachen to Zylinderdruckpresse - German entry about their project regarding German Misplaced Pages
- Misplaced Pages:Size of Misplaced Pages – internal page on Misplaced Pages about the project's hypothetical printed size
References
- ^ "Print Misplaced Pages, in 7,600 volumes, to sell for $500,000". The Hindu. June 21, 2015. Archived from the original on August 6, 2020. Retrieved August 18, 2019 – via www.thehindu.com.
- ^ Hegert, Natalie (June 24, 2015). "Standing Out in the Crowd: 10 Summer Solo Shows Around the World in 2015". MutualArt.com. Archived from the original on November 5, 2015. Retrieved August 18, 2019.
- Sawers, Paul (June 17, 2015). "You can soon buy a 7,471-volume printed version of English Misplaced Pages for $500,000". VentureBeat. Archived from the original on February 5, 2016. Retrieved January 29, 2016.
- Misplaced Pages, Volume 0873, Arturo O'Farrill Jr. --- Art Deco, Publisher Michael Mandiberg, 2015, page 611450 ISBN 9781329244580
- ^ Schuessler, Jennifer (June 16, 2015). "Moving Misplaced Pages From Computer to Many, Many Bookshelves". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 2, 2016. Retrieved August 18, 2019.
- Duvernay, Jennifer (2016). "In the Stacks: Print Misplaced Pages". Archived from the original on February 22, 2017.
- O’Donnell, Jim (March 12, 2016). "Michael Mandiberg's Print Misplaced Pages at Arizona State University". Denny Gallery. Archived from the original on April 1, 2023.
- Mandiberg, Michael (March 2016). "Print Misplaced Pages". mandiberg.com. Archived from the original on June 5, 2023.
- "BBC World Service - World Update, Why print copies of Misplaced Pages?". BBC. Archived from the original on August 23, 2019. Retrieved August 18, 2019.
- Schuessler, Jennifer (July 13, 2015). "Print Misplaced Pages Project Reaches Final Entry". The New York Times. Archived from the original on July 15, 2015. Retrieved July 13, 2015.
- Ghorashi, Hannah (June 24, 2015). "From Aaaaa! to ZZZap!: Michael Mandiberg on His Plan to Print Misplaced Pages". Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved August 18, 2019.
- Neary, Lynn (March 30, 2014). "Printing Misplaced Pages Would Take 1 Million Pages, But That's Sort Of The Point". NPR.org. Archived from the original on July 29, 2019. Retrieved August 18, 2019.
- Culpan, Daniel (June 19, 2015). "Art exhibit proves it's impossible to print all of Misplaced Pages". Wired UK. Archived from the original on January 3, 2019. Retrieved August 18, 2019 – via www.wired.co.uk.
- "Uitnodiging: Misplaced Pages uitgeprint in Gent - Wikimedia Belgium". be.wikimedia.org. Archived from the original on December 15, 2018. Retrieved August 18, 2019.
