may 1, 2002 - Seth Price, Dispersion

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“Suppose an artist were to release the work directly into a system that depends on reproduction and distribution for its sustenance, a model that encourages contamination, borrowing, stealing, and horizontal blur?” Price posed this question in his essay “Dispersion” in 2002, when digital technology was beginning to fundamentally change the way art and ideas are distributed around the globe. The essay has circulated in various forms, including a printed book, a PDF available online at

Originally released at a time when the internet was beginning to affect nearly all aspects of culture, it argued that distribution, rather than production, was the primary way in which works accrued meaning, and that artists needed to find ways of harnessing the enormous capacity for meaning-making inherent in communications networks.

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