Volume 5724, Rapeseed Methyl Ester --- Rapid Re-Housing

Volume 5724, Rapeseed Methyl Ester---Rapid Re-Housing Print Wikipedia is a both a utilitarian visualization of the largest accumulation of human knowledge and a poetic gesture towards the inhuman scale of big data. Michael Mandberg wrote software that parses the entirety of the English-language Wikipedia database and programmatically lays out nearly 7500 volumes, complete with covers, and then uploads them to Lulu.com for print-on-demand. Print Wikipedia draws attention to the sheer size of the encyclopedia's content and the impossibility of rendering Wikipedia as a material object in fixed form: Once a volume is printed it is already out of date. It is also a work of found poetry built on what is likely the largest appropriation ever made. As we become increasingly more dependent on information and source material on the Internet today, Mandiberg explores the accessibility of its vastness.