Michael Mandiberg, a Detroit-born artist, scholar and educator spoke about the conceptual appeal of his artwork “Print Wikipedia” on Thursday night at Grant Street Studios.
“Print Wikipedia” is a visualization of the immensity of human knowledge shown through the use of books as a unit of measurement.
Mandiberg said the project also emphasized how “preposterous” physical sources are in the modern era now that they are continuously being outdated.
Mandiberg explained his artwork enhances a play with usefulness.
“It is something that has utility and is also completely useless,” Mandiberg said.
Mandiberg came up with a software that transformed the English-language Wikipedia database into 7,473 volumes of nearly 700 pages each.
He first started his project back in 2009 and has been continuously working on it for the last six years. His work will be shown at ASU’s Hayden Library until May 21.
Courtney Richter, a graduate student in the ASU fibers program, was very excited to go visit the exhibit.
“I feel like I needed to see the objects and see as he installed it,” Richter said.
Alongside this project, Mandiberg has created a campaign called “Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon” to improve the coverage of women and the arts on Wikipedia. According to Mandiberg, this issue should be addressed because Wikipedia has become the major source of online information.
“The gender gap is a major issue on Wikipedia,” Mandiberg said.
He said about 10 percent of all editors are women.
Kim Lyle, an ASU graduate intermedia student, appreciated Mandiberg’s idea “to bring in other people into the conversation.”
“If this is done by 90 percent white middle-class men, how do you think that’s shaping the story that we are creating?” Lyle said.
The “Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon” event will be held at ASU’s Hayden Library on March 18.
Mandiberg mentioned a few other projects he worked on in the past. One of his first projects was “Shop Mandiberg,” an e-commerce site, which sells Mandiberg’s belongings for people to unravel his identity. He also talked about a plug-in he developed called “Real Costs” that would transform travel related data into CO2 emissions.
Mandiberg considers his work to be very “private.”
“My work, the way I think about it is: I like to play,” Mandiberg said. “And I like to put the wrong thing in the wrong place.”
Contact the reporter at gcallesm@asu.edu.
