NYAB Event - David Horvitz "How Can a Digital be Gift? "

David Horvitz "How Can a Digital be Gift? "

The Goethe-Institut New York

This event has ended.

The End(s) of the Library is a series of artist commissions taking place at the Goethe-Institut New York library from October 2012-June 2013 organized by Jenny Jaskey. For the first of these projects, David Horvitz will address the role of digital rights management (DRM) within the library's infrastructure. Working with a group of artists and independent publishers, Horvitz will attempt to make a generous donation of artist books to the Goethe-Institut library in digital format. His gift will be contingent upon these materials being available to library users for an unlimited timeframe and without restriction for edition size. Both of these aspects of e-books - their length of use and number of copies - are currently limited within the e-book system, in which each book is understood as a singular object.

Horvitz' project, entitled How Can a Digital be Gift?, will explore the challenges of the digital format to the library's circulation model, emphasizing the important role played by third-party distributors who provide the online platforms necessary for sharing digital content. With these platforms, libraries no longer own the books in their collections, but rather subscribe to them as rented data.

To carryout his project, Horvitz will be in residence at the Goethe-Institut New York, integrating his collecting and digitization work into the library's everyday existence. He will maintain an active blog documenting various aspects of his project, and will embark upon an extended conversation with the Goethe-Institut library staff and their information providers. In celebration of the artist books donated to the Goethe-Institut, Horvitz will host a special event and book launch for BFFA3AE by digital publisher Badlands Unlimited, the Los Angeles-based music group Lucky Dragons, and Andrew Beccone of the Reanimation Library on Monday, November 26, 2012 beginning at 7 p.m.

David Horvitz (b. 1983, Los Angeles) is a New York-based artist whose work shifts seamlessly between the Internet and the printed page. His participatory practice, which often involves close collaborations with other artists, as well as a web-based audience, considers strategies of information circulation and the impermanence of digital artifacts. Horvitz work has been included in exhibitions at The Kitchen, New York; Art Metropole, Vancouver; Or Gallery, Vancouver; and New Museum, New York, among others.