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DissemiNET webspace + DissemiNETion installation Sawad Brooks + Beth Stryker
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Disseminetion As part of the Body Mecanique exhibition at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Sept 18- Jan 3, "Disseminetion" will install two telematic instruments as interfaces between the transient public space of the gallery, and the cumulative public webspace of dissemiNET. Providing a gathering space and region for dispatches to dissemiNET, these freestanding hardware/software interfaces to a local community are designed for multiple user viewing and input (collection) and output (recollection). These homing + dissemination devices may be later transplanted to target communities. DissemiNET is conceived by Sawad Brooks + Beth Stryker to elaborate a diaspora on the web. Creating a repository for personal and social memory, DissemiNET uses web technologies to give visual form to the transactions (deposits, retrievals, and loss) through which we experience memory. The Disseminet reelaborates terms such as "origin", "home(site)", "diaspora", and "search", in terms of and through the mechanisms of the web. Drawing parallels between diasporas and the dispersal of meaning over the web, DissemiNET in response provide spaces (lacunae) for people to recall and recollect, gathering there to re-tell stories about their own experiences with displacement and dispersal. Over time, DissemiNET will become a collection of such stories of errancy. The pool of stories may be harvested and read in relation to searcheable keywords or themes (words and phrases which the search engine may match or exclude). A visitor may trace visually the displacement and distribution of their keywords or themes over the stories culled by the search engine. In this way the DisseminNET may touch an "unconscious" element of the archive which would otherwise be constituted through *conscious* retelling. Through DissemiNET, participants may re-image the "family tree"; drawing "trees" of emergent identifications, of resemblance, and kinship. An initial curated installment will investigate and upload cases with Probusqueda de Los Ninos in El Salvador, where stories of disappearances and displacements have accumulated in the wake of a 12 year civil war. Traveling through the countryside of El S alvador, Probusqueda has gathered testimonials, tracing the passages of youth taken from their families, to unknown places spanning countries and continents. DissemiNET will act as a broadcast mechanism, disseminating these stories. |