#Dissemination

“ In the Post Internet climate, it is assumed that the work of art lies equally in the version of the object one would encounter at a gallery or museum, the images and other representations disseminated through the Internet and print publications, bootleg images of the object or its representations, and variations on any of these as edited and recontextualized by any other author. [...] This marks a denigration of objects and our relationship to space – if an object before us in the gallery is only one of an infinite multitude of possible forms that object can take, it’s value to the viewer becomes little more than a curiosity’
Artie Vierkant, 'The Image Object Post Internet'

by Jeanine Griffin, Wednesday, 15 May, 2019

relates to seeds. Over long periods of time, casting seeds across ground became narrowcasting experimental materials, such as across radio waves, which later became broadcasting.

by Esther Leslie, Monday, 17 June, 2019




In the Special Collection of UCL in London, partly housed at the Grant Museum of Zoology, is kept an incomplete set of foraminifera plaster models. These marine microorganisms are an extensive order of rhizopods, consisting of a chambered shell of calcium carbonate. Many of them have various openings or holes in their shell through which pseudopodia extend, giving them their name: foramen, which can be translated as ‘hole bearer’.

In the nineteenth century, leading scientists disseminated sets of foraminifera models reproduced in plaster to promote the study of Palaeontology. Alcide D’Orbigny (1802- 1857), for example, based at the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, sculpted over 100 different specimens of these microfossils in limestone, and then moulded and cast them in plaster. They were distributed in fasciculi comprising 25 models each, accompanied by printed illustrations.

It is possible to consider these plaster works as teaching aids. For this is what they once were, before they were taken out of circulation:

I start to wonder what it is they aid, what and how they assist? What do they teach? What do they demonstrate? Of course they simplify, reduce and abstract as much as they present and make concrete. They are part of the set of things that come into being and are circulated to make non-comprehension bearable (like calling something “Big Bang”). They are shaped by their sculptural properties of scale and material transformation. They were formed in an age that needed classification. But also formed by a will to instruct; Multiplied and dispersed by the ambition to exchange and disseminate knowledge; But also formed by faith in visionary thoughts, faith in the capacity to disseminate and also by a drive and absolute necessity to disseminate, to process and then retrieve information, perceptions, and knowledge.

by Florian Roithmayr, Sunday, 23 June, 2019

Dissemination as scattering enabled by genes, wind, ink, frequencies as the carriers of DNA/RNA, hieroglyphs, emojis and block chains for the codes. Casting them out, and then some are cast out. Biblical and sexual metaphors may abound – seeds fall on stoney ground, but what if we emphasis the dis – to asunder, to break apart as a significant act of dissemination? This is a reversal of authenticating knowledges through interferences and diffractions. It makes a joyful mockery of individuated noise-cancelling headphones, (unless you are needing to use a pneumatic drill).

by Michelle Atherton, Tuesday, 9 July, 2019

Dissemination is the intentional transmission, whether by electronic transmission or otherwise, of a phonogram, phonogram-like material, or a material phonogram, on a computer network or other networked means. It is a communication that the recipient must accept or not accept.  That does not mean they know they are reading it, but the receiver can't claim ignorance or even confusion in the event of success().

(Jan Hopkins aided by GPT-2 text generator)

by Jan Hopkins , Monday, 23 September, 2019

What I like about this word is that it can be deployed without implying the action: 'upon examination image files are never found grouped together but always disseminated throughout the hard drive'.

by Matthew Cheeseman, Saturday, 11 April, 2020

Define Dissemination:


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