Printing the Web: From “Yellow Pages” to Art Installations

• In Event: Toward Multiplicity and Complexity: Examining World Wide Webs

Abstract

In the early 1990s, publishers began churning out dozens of books to serve as directories of every URL available on the World Wide Web. Commonly called web or Internet “yellow pages,” these tomes aimed to help users navigate in a pre-search era. By 1999, such texts practically ceased to exist, replaced by nascent search engines. Although these books – and the very idea of cataloguing an entire web – might seem outlandish (not to mention impossible) today, a sustained investigation of this set of works yields insights into historical negotiations about cataloguing a “whole” web in a permanent, bookshelf-ready format. Studying the dynamics of material culture on- and offline, this paper brings printed web directories of the past into conversation with art projects of the present like “Printing Out the Internet” by Kenneth Goldsmith, Internet Directory by Daniel Temkin, and “Library of the Printed Web” by Paul Soulellis. I propose that these projects and their forbearers confront ongoing issues of temporality, materiality, space, and politics through their efforts to imagine what a “printed web” might look like.

Author

• Rachel Plotnick, U of North Carolina - Charlotte