Morning Cheer-Me-Up: MoMA's first poet laureate to print out the innernut

The only thing I don't like about this project is what happens to it when the exhibition ends. From Yahoo News:

Kenneth Goldsmith wants to print out the Internet. And he wants you to help him attempt this presumably impossible feat. 

“What you decide to print out is up to you — as long as it exists somewhere online, it’s in,” Goldsmith’s announcement explains. “We just want shitloads of paper. We’re literally looking for folks to print out the entire internet. We have over 500 square meters of space to fill, with ceilings that are over 6 meters high.” This exhibition (if that’s the right word for it) will go on view July 26; when it ends in August, the paper will be recycled.

The project was inspired by, and is dedicated to, Aaron Swartz, the programmer-activist who committed suicide earlier this year, and who had been accused by federal prosecutors of breaking various laws in the course of downloading a giant cache of academic articles from the JSTOR service. Like Swartz, Goldsmith is a believer in information availability.

“The amount of what he liberated was enormous -- we can't begin to understand the magnitude of his action until we begin to materialize and actualize it,” Goldsmith said when reached via email. “This project tries to bring that point home.”

If you’re familiar with Goldsmith, the idea to print out the entire Internet may not be a surprise: Currently serving as the Museum of Modern Art’s first poet laureate, and the founding editor of UbuWeb, a sprawling online archive of avant garde creativity, Goldsmith is an unusual thinker, to say the least....

 

"An unusual thinker." Good. (Where's The Scorekeeper when you need him?)

Comments

[Mannie Sherberg]

A crazy idea -- which is why it's so magnificent! Nobody -- Mr. Goldsmith excepted -- thinks in Promethean terms anymore. We are in a cultural funk, where crackpot dreams and zany ideas are routinely derided when they ought to be cherished as much-needed mind-stretchers. The idea of printing out what is literally unprintable -- how could we ever be sure we'd printed every last pixel in every remote crevice of the Internet? -- is, in a way, more audacious than stealing fire from the gods. Thank you, Yael, and thank you, Kenneth Goldsmith. You've both made my day.