Statement
This is a sketch we drew on the reverse side of a printout of a testimony collected by Pro-Busqueda de los Ninos. We have many such sketches. In this one we are trying to work through ways of representing tensions within "DissemiNET," between organic and schematic, thematic and lexical, words and drawing, complete and abbreviated, present and referenced, and some others. We were imagining how certain relations between words might be visualized as "tree" structures. The two such relations around which "DissemiNET" is built, lexical and semantic resemblance, are combined in the schema drawn toward the upper-left corner of the sheet. For example, the word "belong" morphs lexically into "belongs," but is also related semantically to "dwell." "Dwell," in turn, is shown simultaneously morphing into "dell," "dwells," "dwelt," "swell," and "well." These relations were derived from a combination of two different software tools: "wordnet" (for the semantic relations) and "agrep" (for the lexical relations). This software would eventually be integrated by Linda Tauscher into the database software components of "DissemiNET." From this sketch we would also eventually derive the two of the four main visual/interface elements of "DissemiNET": the "themes tree" and the "crossroads."

Bio
Sawad Brooks is an artist based in New York. His net-based artworks and installations have been exhibited widely, including shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Museum Bojimans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada, the Walker Art Center, M.I.T.'s List Visual Arts Center, the Johannesburg Biennale in South Africa and Postmasters Gallery in New York.

Beth Stryker's net-based artworks and installations have been widely exhibited, including shows at the Wexner Center for the Arts, OH (1998); the Walker Art Center, MN (1995,2000); the Museum Bojimans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (1999); Artspace Gallery, Sydney (1998); the Banff Centre for the Arts, Alberta (1997); and the Whitney Museum (2001). She is the recipient of a 1999 NYFA Fellowship in Computer Arts, and was named one of the top 40 designers under 30 by ID Magazine in 2000.