Academic Copy is an installation that begins by observing the cycle of photocopying and digitization of texts as a process of construction and erosion in the current dynamics of management, distribution, consumption and production in educational institutions.

Inside the sculptural object there is a printer, speakers, and a processor that takes difficult-to-read digitized photocopies from the database. While outputting an optical character recognition translation read by the computer’s synthetic voice.

Photocopies undergo a series of modifications in our daily lives, from writing and marking to the margins, such as underlining and sweeping of the carbon that adheres to the surface of the sheet. These will intervene in the reading of the original text and add more information, both visual and verbal. If the photocopy becomes a matrix for others, the process of wear and tear and interventions will continue. The process continues when the photocopy has been digitized, becoming a portable PDF document whose deterioration of the original text is visible and directly affects the reading. A set of fadings, attritions and palimpsests of memory, in which the verbal text and its paratexts are numerical information.

The result of the translation of these photocopies as an image produced by the deformation and distortion in the distribution process is demonstrated through optical character recognition (OCR) and its enunciation through the speech synthesis program, making evident the inseparability of its elements.