Dissemination: context

17.01.2024

This area of my site will become a space for me to express personal thoughts about the topic of ‘dissemination’ within the context of the visual, cultural and political landscape (developing further as time goes on), showcasing what this word means and how to define it through various formats such as, short form, long form, written and visual essays, lists, video, links, lectures and presentations etc...

Please note: the puropose of this space is to develop my writing and critical thinking. There will be times where I misspell, contradict, lose and lack sense and argument, but ultimately the work will become documentation of my thoughts trying to understand exactly what the meaning of visual communcation is. I also encourage an open dialogue to my thoughts by geting in contact via email tom1.heath1@gmail.com or social media @heath_tom

I aim to create a series of pages/tabs/links which follow the system of ‘Dissemination:’... – ‘Dissemination: image’, ‘Dissemination: theory’ so on and so forth in order to express my thoughts about how this word can influence the the mindset of graphic designers.

The reason this platform exists in my mind is down to my time researching at Fabrica Research Centre. I took the oportunity to use the space, freedom and time we had to discover why it is what I do personally as a graphic desginer/visual communicator/artist. During this period of disovery, I opened up various artist books and followed a number of online breadcrumbs to discover writings about why other designers, artists, musicians, creative people do what they do, make what they make, live how they live.

The discovery of dissmenination took place before I understoond what the word would mean in the context to my own practice, in a book called 272 pages by Hans-Peter Feldmann, where he wrote down a quote by Chuck Berry: "Just remember, my accounts of actions I’ve experienced are the fourth generation of communication. First, it happened; second, I conceived what happened; third, I reproduced what I conceived; and fourth, you will conceive what I have reproduced.". This quote opended up ideas about my practice that I had never experieced before. New possibliities and reasoning behind why I make the things I make. After sitting with this quote for some time, reading on about Hans-Peter Feldmann, my subcounsions was making sense of why this quote resonated with me so much. I kept researching about various artists/designers who were writing about topics that interested me and further down the line I discovered Ingo Offermanns who helped me further to understand the role of being a graphic designer:

“Leave your ego, play your music, and love the people.” 1

Translator Swetlana Geier once said that one reads from left to right, but one translates with head held high. This of course refers to internalization, not hubris. Design is also a form of translation. It is interpretation and authorship: humble authorship, relating empathically to the object of direct relation. Design is abstraction, deviation, allusion, and craftsmanship. What drives people to design, translate, and interpret? Swetlana Geier would say it is a yearning for the Original.

Form produces meaning. Whether one wishes it or not. Neutrality, friendliness, modernity, voluptuousness, machismo, simplicity, warmth, distortion, sweetness, humility, balance – all possible concepts – remain negotiable values. This negotiation continues seven days of the week. Graphic Design is a part of this negotiation of the everyday, and is therefore jointly responsible for elements of our daily forms of behavior. Forms of behavior mirror personal attitude, imposing conditioning on environments and on the people who live in them. In other words: a nuanced treatment of form is important, and will remain so.

“According to the most well-known principle of Humboldt’s philosophy of language, language is ‘the formative agent of thought.’ In language the productive activity of the mind, one could also say: its performative potential, is expressed. Language is no given system of signs and symbols, no tool of communication, but rather a creative force (energeia) that fundamentally determines man’s relationship to reality. Humboldt describes it as a ‘logical intermediate world,’ a ‘world of vocal sounds,’ which the mind, by its own power, must place between itself and external objects in order to internalize and cope with the objective world. This is why language so decisively determines our worldview.” 2

Different media and means of transport create different forms of encounters. An encounter in which one makes no commitment to the other is no more than tourism. To learn the language of the other is to engage in an exchange. Cultural exchange is translation, and is the responsibility of Graphic Design. Translation is a key cultural technique of global communication. Striving for an international language, however, is both idealistic and naive. Language can be tamed only to a certain extent. Graphic practitioners therefore work at least as much on changing communication symptoms as on the dilemma of their causes. It is Sisyphus, not Hercules, who is the graphic practitioner’s hero.

“If one denies language its deviations and indirectness, it becomes a yell or a command. If walking lacks all hesitation, all pausing along the way, it ossifies into a march.” 3

Translation never functions without friction gains and friction losses. It is always, also, a commentary and an attitude. Graphic practitioners therefore act just as they react. Graphic practitioners are concerned with language, dialogue and translation. All three phenomena require dedication and distancing, acts of letting go and deciding. All three phenomena are brought to life by convention, personal attitude, and surprise. In other words: the attitude of a graphic designer is shown by his or her personal engagement with the phenomena of language, dialogue, and translation, and in the ability to engage in exchanges concerning these phenomena. His or her praxis oscillates between the parameters of participation, collaboration, interpretation, ordering, profiling, evaluating, renewing, showing, seducing, and serving.

“Every translation is primarily the result of a design process involving language as its substance. The process does not emanate from focusing on an object, but rather from focusing on the tension between two ways of handling an object. This is a process in which the ‘what’ takes a backseat to the ‘how.’ […] The ‘what’ is only of interest inasmuch as it discloses layers of the ‘how.’ These extend farther and deeper than most readers imagine. […] As a non-native speaker, the translator is constantly balancing between chasms and abysses – between two languages, two worlds made up of images and sounds, between calling out and listening, listening and writing, skill based on knowledge and art beyond the pale of knowledge. To whom is he answerable? To language itself.” 4

Graphic Design is a discipline for meeting the world: for translation, for construction, for representation, for memory, and for multiplication. Meaning and function are always an integral part of visual communication. Rationality emphasizes the functionality. As functional necessity decreases, the focus shifts to design qualities. Graphic artifacts once again become ritual objects.

“‘Remember me, whispers the dust.’ (Peter Huchl) And one hears in this that if we learn about ourselves from the time, perhaps time, in turn, may learn something from us. What would that be? That inferior in significance, we best it in sensitivity. […] that passion is the privilege of the insignificant.” 5

Graphic Design is based upon actions and experiences. Graphic Design is a mediated discipline, a discipline of indirect exchange, whose focus is, in multiple ways, on ephemeral communication. Its requirements are: a thirst for knowledge coupled with doubt, initiative and experience, fervor and empathy. Graphic Design is a cultural technique for the knowledge-based society, and for capitalism. To think about Graphic Design is to think about a living cultural technique.

“The old ritual: Stand back, look, approach again, grasp, feel, hesitate, then sudden activity and then another long pause …” 6

1 Luther Allison
2 Excerpt from: Boris Buden, “Der Schacht von Babel. Ist Kultur übersetzbar? (The Shaft of Babel. Is Culture translatable?)”
3 Excerpt from: Byung-Chul Han, “Duft der Zeit (Scent of the Times)”
4 Excerpt from: Esther Kinsky, “Fremdsprechen (Speaking in foreign Tongues)”
5 Excerpt from: Josef Brodsky, “In Praise of Boredom”
6 Excerpt from: Wim Wenders, “Notebook on Cities and Clothes”

The discovery of these quotes led me to the idea of dissemination and wondering how this word could connect to my practice somehow. I find it interesting to link it to the world of publishing.

It’s also important to understand what dissemination means from an etomology stand point. From Latin dissēminātus (“broadcast”), past participle of dissēmināre, from dis- (“in all directions”) + sēmināre (“to plant or propagate”), from sēmen, sēminis (“seed”).

Topics of work could consist of:
Dispersion
Disinformation
Propaganda
Circulation
Distribution
Reproduction

In ordee for dissemination to haoppen, the four generations of communications must coexist.