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END TIME : ENDLESS ENCYCLOPAEDIA - a complete index of all elements leading to the end of the world!, Linda Hilfling, University of Malmö, Olle Essvik and Joel Nordqvist, Förlag Rojal

End Time : Endless Encyclopaedia is a generative book project written in COBOL code, monitored through RSS-feeds, printed on Bible paper, and hand bound by Förlag Rojal.

Towards the turn of the Millennium attention was directed towards the so-called Y2K bug. The fear was that upon reaching the year 2000, computers would not be able to distinguish the 00 of 2000 from the 00 of 1900, thus leading to failures within major societal infrastructures.

In spring 1999, a reader of a Christian conservative magazine wrote a letter to the editor in which he carefully described how the computer, through a self-invented numerologic algorithm, could be proven to be the work of the devil. According to this system the word "computer" could be translated to the values 666 – the number of Antichrist.

End Time : Endless Encyclopaedia is a reenactment of this letter to the editor and the numerologic system which it describes translated into COBOL, a generative computer code that contributed to Y2K millennium bug fears. The algorithm is continuously monitoring the Internet in order to detect potentially 'satanic' elements. Each time it does, a new letter is generated and emailed to the editor of the journal End Time and a copy of the letter is added as an article to the encyclopaedia. The executing algorithm has detected that in addition to "computer", even "Santa Claus", "Humanity", "New York", "Ipad Touch", "Kilowatt" and "Cherry Coke" result in the number of the Beast and are thus shown to be works of Lucifer. When the number of articles reaches 666, they are compiled into a new volume of the endless encyclopaedia and published as hand bound books by Förlag Rojal.


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