Issue 15 The Average Fall 2004

Table of Contents

The fifteenth issue of Cabinet features a themed section on "The Average." This section, guest-edited by Paul Fleming, includes artist projects by Rutherford Chang and Jason Salavon, an excerpt from Robert Shields's exhaustive diary (the world's longest, documenting every minute of his life), a history of paint by numbers, and a host of other theorizations of mediocrity.

Columns
  • Colors / Purple
    Matthew Klam
    Good culla
  • Inventory / $@#%*!!!
    Jeffrey Kastner
    David Kaufer and the origins of Eudora’s pepper system
  • Leftovers / The Day of the Remains
    Philip Scher
    Battles over bodies
  • Thing / No. 2
    Paul Maliszewski, R. K. Scher and Mary Walling Blackburn
    Three reports
Main
  • Streambeat
    Joseph Grigely
    Fran Betters and the mysteries of streamside representation
  • Are the Stars Out Tonight?: An Interview with Robert Evans
    Jeffrey Kastner and Robert Evans
    Scanning the skies with the world's greatest supernova hunter
  • Artist Project / The Celestial Incorporation Project
    Lee Boroson
  • Wilkommen in Irak!
    Walead Beshty and Eric Schwab
    In Berlin, a little bit of Baghdad
  • Rock Books
    Brian Tucker
    Richard Sharpe Shaver's lapidary fantasies
  • En Piste: An Interview with James Niehues
    Jocko Weyland and James Niehues
    The art of the ski-area map
The Average
  • 100,000 Average Joes
    Paul Fleming
    Defining the middle ground
  • By the Numbers: An Interview with William L. Bird, Jr.
    Sasha Archibald, David Serlin and William L. Bird Jr.
    Painting a picture of the middle class
  • Middle Men
    Eva Geulen
    The aesthetics of the mediocre
  • The Law of Averages 1: Normman and Norma
    Dahlia S. Cambers
    Looking for Mr. and Mrs. America
  • The Law of Averages 2: American Adonis
    Mary Coffey
    Eugenics, statistics, and the controversial paunch
  • The Law of Averages 3: Meet Marianne
    Måns Wrange
    The Average Citizen project
  • The Decline of the Average Mind
    Barry Sanders
    Things fall apart
  • Artist Project / 100 Special Moments
    Jason Salavon
  • Predictable You
    Dahlia S. Cambers
    On actuarial tables
  • Standard Deviation: An Interview with Jürgen Link
    Anne Mihan, Thomas O. Haakenson and Jürgen Link
    Modernity and the reign of normalism
  • One Damn Page after Another
    Robert Shields
    The relentless diary
  • Life on the Bell Curve: An Interview with Theodore Porter
    Paul Fleming and Theodore Porter
    Redefining mediocrity
  • Artist Project / Alphabetized Newspaper
    Rutherford Chang
  • Fanfares for the Common Man
    A selection of political quotes
  • How Little We Know of Our Neighbors
    Rebecca Baron
    Mass-Observation and the meaning of everyday life
  • Buttons and Pockets
    Bernard Rudofsky
    Drawings by Bernard Rudofsky
And
  • Postcard 1 / Homokak Family (A Nut Study)
  • Postcard 2 / Fitter Families for Future Firesides
  • Bookmark / The Pixel at Fifty
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