JODI - Introduction

JODI

JODI JODI - the art collective consisting of Joan Heemskerk (NL, 1968) and Dirk Paesmans (BE, 1965) - pioneered web-based art in the mid-1990s. Their work uses the widest possible variety of media and techniques, from installations, software and websites to performances and exhibitions. In a medium-specific way, they (de) construct and analyze the languages of new media: from visual aesthetics to interface elements, from codes and features to errors and viruses. They challenge the relationship between technology and users by subverting our expectations about the functionalities and conventions of the systems that we depend upon every day.

Paesmans and Heemskerk have a background in video art and photography respectively. Both attended CADRE, the electronic arts laboratory at San Jose State University in California; Dirk Paesmans also studied with Nam June Paik at the Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf. The duo works together since 1995.

JODI's work is featured in most art historical volumes about electronic and media art, and has been exhibited widely at venues such as Documenta X, Kassel; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; ZKM, Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe; Bonner Kunstverein and Artothek, Bonn; InterCommunication Center, Tokyo; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Center for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Eyebeam, New York; and Museum of the Moving Image, New York, among many others. They received a 1999 Webby Award in the category Net Art. In 2014, JODI was awarded the inaugural Prix Net Art Award by Rhizome, a leading art organization dedicated to borndigital art and culture affiliated with the New Museum in New York.

Net Art The 1990s witnessed a technological development of unprecedented speed for the digital medium – the so-called ‘digital revolution’. Artists have always been the first to use and reflect on new media and techniques. When the World Wide Web advented in the mid 90s, JODI were among the first artists to respond to the introduction of the internet.

Art on the internet challenges the traditional ways of looking at art, like conceptual art did in the 1960s. Net art can be seen as a contemporary avant-garde in more ways than one: it circumvents the traditional institutions of galleries and museums, being distributed across the world for everyone (with an internet net connection) to see. In many cases, the work is interactive and asks for some kind of participation from the viewer.

The work usually has no beginning nor an end. Internet art is rooted in disparate artistic traditions and movements, like Dada, conceptual art, Fluxus and performance art.

In the field of net art JODI are the Netherlands’ or even the world’s most important representatives. Since 1995 they have been radically exploring the medium.. They invite those who engage with their art to critically reflect upon how the increasing corporatization of the internet has influenced the relationship between users and online platforms.

Art Basel 2021, Upstream Gallery, Hall 2.1 | Booth T1

wwwwwwwww.jodi.org (1995) Website (HTML, Javascript) Dimensions variable, duration infinite

Visit the work here: wwwwwwwww.jodi.org wwwwwwwww.jodi.org is part of JODI’s very first web-based artwork, launched in 1995, in the early days of the World Wide Web.The work is exemplary of JODI’s artistic practice, which is characterized by chaos and non-functional designs that reveal the fundamental characteristics of the net.

The infamous website consists of a maze of pages written in HTML code, full of secrets and dead ends. It gave the internet user a feeling of powerlessness. This was partly caused by the confrontation with the programming language and unexpected effects, which were caused by system errors (so-called ‘glitches’). Instead of utopian thoughts, in which the digital revolution would bring about new forms of transparency, JODI showed how the web could lead to uncontrollable chaos, miscommunication and confusion.

SOD (1999) Software (Wolfenstein game engine, C++ ) Dimensions variable, duration infinite

Get an impression of the game here While JODI is widely known for their internet art works, another important part of their practice are the modifications of popular games. SOD is one of JODI’s earlier game modifications. In SOD, the early video game Wolfenstein 3D (1992), in which the goal was to escape from a Nazi dungeon, is heavily deconstructed into a near-abstract maze of pure geometrical forms and pixelated patterns in black, white, and gray.

The result is a game space that is loosely architectural and extremely disorienting.

Where Wolfenstein 3D’s representational renderings were considered state-of-the art at the time of the game’s release, JODI’s goal was to bring it back to its abstract dynamics to understand the underlying coded “behaviours” of the game.

Wrongbrowser NL (2001) Software (.app, .exe) Dimensions variable, duration infinite Wrongbrowser NL is one of a series of alternative web browsers and revolves around the concept of Top-Level Domains. A TLD is usually the last part of a domain name, like .COM or in this case, .NL. Website names have become valuable commodities, subject to speculation: they are bought up and resold at profit. Each one of the Wrongbrowsers works on the same basic principles. Immediately on being started up, the Wrongbrowser seeks a random three-letter combination within a specific domain (for instance, NL.). If this website actually exists, the Wrongbrowser reproduces that page as text (html. code).

If the Internet was at first without boundaries, presently national boundaries are being drawn (.NL, .CO.UK, etc.), possibly mixed with original domain abbreviations such as .COM and .ORG, etc. By restraining itself within a domain, the Wrongbrowser confronts us with this paradox.

OSS/****-%20 (1998) Software on Mini Mac (.app) Dimensions variable, duration infinite OSS/**** is one of JODI’s better known software based works. It was originally released as a CD-ROM packaged with the Fall 1998 issue of Mediamatic, a Dutch magazine on media, art and television. OSS/**** explores the different physical elements of a personal computer – the screen, the mouse and the keyboard – through the different programs: **** ***, #Reset and %20.

Collectively, these programs engaged the physical situation of the computer – subverting the illusion of the graphical user interface, and drawing awareness in the viewer to their engagement with their private desktop on their personal computer.

The version we show here, %20, features the keyboard and its relationship with what is happening on the screen: the program alters the desktop visually according to various parameters activated by the keys. The sound, and the changing, frequently stroboscopic rhythm with which the images move, create in the user a tension around the status of their own data, as much as an exploration of the key combinations offered by the artists.

My%Desktop (2002) in the collection presentation of the new MoMA

The participatory work \/\/iFi (2018) in Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

\/\/iFi_node#5 (Broom) (2018) Installation (Raspberry Pi 3, Wireless USB adapter, broom)

View video documentation of \/\/iFi here

With their participatory work \/\/iFi, JODI draws attention to the pervasive infiltration of geolocation software into everyday life by allowing visitors to track cell phone signals in the surrounding area. Users are asked to log in to a Wi-Fi network via nodes installed in the exhibition space, which serve as omnipresent reminders that visitors are being surveilled. Once connected, viewers see nearby cell phones represented by different brand names, codes, colors, and shapes. Here, JODI employs a geolocation technology similar to the one Google uses to provide live visit information, wait times, and estimated visit duration for local businesses.

With \/\/iFi, the user becomes simultaneously the monitor and the surveilled.

\/\/iFi

With their participatory work \/\/iFi, JODI draws attention to the pervasive infiltration of geolocation software into everyday life by allowing visitors to track cell phone signals in the surrounding area.

Users are asked to log in to a Wi-Fi network via nodes installed throughout the exhibition space in prominent locations, which serve as omnipresent reminders that visitors are being surveilled. Once connected, viewers see nearby cell phones represented by different brand names, codes, colors, and shapes. Here, JODI employs a geolocation technology similar to the one Google uses to provide live visit information, wait times, and estimated visit duration for local businesses. Though many people enjoy the convenience of being able to access this information, the artists point out that Google quietly collects this data from its users without telling them they are doing so or how it might be utilized. With \/\/iFi, the user becomes simultaneously the monitor and the surveilled. \/\/iFi reveals not only the means by which corporations increasingly track our movement, but also how the extensive, constant use of mobile devices has caused a monumental shift in our relationship to space. Geolocation technology collapses on- and offline space, as traffic in a real-world location is mirrored on a corresponding digital map. The tracking and geographic positioning of bodies via cell phone signals similarly flattens information, as individuals are transformed into raw data. Differences of race, gender, class, sexual orientation, and ability are not expressed, and people are identified instead by the brand of their phone, effectively making them consumers above all else. Though JODI engages with urgent political questions in their work, they do not take explicit positions and prefer instead to simply unveil the workings of the computational systems operating around us, and to disrupt the predetermined ways in which users are conditioned by corporations to interact with technology. \/\/iFi thus represents not only a new way of visualizing our physical and socio- political position as users of mobile phones, but also a unique approach to sitespecific art. (Stedelijk Museum Artist Profile).

\/\/iFi, 2018 Raspberry Pi 3, wireless usb adapter, tripod variable Unique

Wi-Fi at the bench [23-26], 2018 Print on acrylic glass 8 x 156 cm Unique

OXO JODI’s new work OXO premiered in 2018 at the Harvard Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The interactive multichannel installation is based on the first graphical computer game OXO (also known as Noughts and Crosses), a tic-tac-toe computer game. JODI’s installation responds to this early history of computing, war games, and artificial intelligence, thinking through the game tic-tac-toe as a combination of the power of artificial intelligence and ad serving.

5478 different game positions are possible and the corresponding board number is displayed as a default advertisement. OXO features nine digital panels that each show a different game together with four structures, each with a keypad corresponding to a standard tic-tac-toe grid, inviting visitors to select where to place their Xs and Os. OXO, 2018 Raspberry Pi 3, custom software, custom keypads, wooden structures Dimensions variable Edition of 3 + 2AP

And/Or grid, at And/Or Gallery, Pasadena (2018)

Entry Floor at Upstream

m Gallery, Amsterdam (2018)

ENTRY FLOOR

Entry Floor is a large scale, site-specific installation, built with cardboard boxes that each measure 50 x 50 x 50 cm, and filling the complete floor of one of the gallery rooms. Visitors are invited to explore the room by walking through the installation, turning simple movement into an exaggerated undertaking. The pixelated installation alludes to an analogue experience of a low-resolution digital reality, and of physical lag.

Instapvloer (‘Entry Floor’), 2018 Cardboard cell grid 50x50x50 cm dimensions variable

“Jodi are undoubtedly among the central figures of Net art […] they were among the first to use the browser in 1995 as a means of making art. They succeeded in developing a precise artistic language with digital tools and in creating substantial content with it. No one had set an example for them. They were the ones to set standards and provide the references.”

Annette Schindler, Walling Broers, p. 54 “If the contemporary art system were not fixated on displays - whether of opulent visuals or of political correctness - and on material objects to be sold, Jodi might be recognized as the most important artists of our time.”

Florian Cramer, p. 67 In: Install.exe - JODI (2002), Basel: Christoph Merian Verlag.

“Since 1995, artist duo JODI have pursued a programmatic, artistic exploration of the computer and the internet.

Trained in photography and video, they began working online while living in the heart of Silicon Valley, where they had an eighteen-month residency at San Jose State University. After learning about the web, they set up a website at the now-famous URL jodi.org, where they have presented an ever-changing series of works that detour and disrupt the material and conventions of the web.”

In: Net art anthology (2019), Rhizome, New York, p. 54.

“The Dutch/Belgian artist duo Jodi have a reputation for toying with code in the most random, genius and funniest ways. Their work is always pleasantly awkward and highly visual. Since the mid-1990s, Jodi’s work has managed to capture the attention of artists, designers, curators and critics worldwide. What makes Jodi’s work so appealing is the apparent ease with which the artists switch between disciplines and their total lack of respect for functional design.

Their work ranges from physical performance, to photography, installation art, video art, conceptual art and poetry in code. It is their ‘cross platform’ work in code and the Web that produced their breakthrough in 1996, after which their work became increasingly influential in both online art and design circles. […]

Jodi combines a very intuitive way of working with a deep exploration of the machine. They chose to work in the Net because of the freedom it offered compared to an institutional art context.”

Josephine Bosma, p. 71/72 In: Nettitudes, Let’s Talk Net Art (2011), NAI Publishers, Rotterdam.

“When asked for their earliest inspiration, the artist duo LoVid simply answered: “Jodi.org !” The name of the artist duo JODI (aka jodi.org), founded in 1994, carries about the same weight as Duchamp’s in canonical importance. Using a 20th-century analog to explain net art is bound to piss somebody off, but the radical spirit of plopping a urinal in a fine art exhibition lives in JODI’s smart repurposing of the internet’s ugly freight that web design takes pains to disguise. While the web was in the business of curtainmaking, JODI was smashing windows.”

Gizmodo

“Two decades ago, when the World Wide Web was just beginning to become commercialized, online artists concerned themselves more with the new formal properties of the internet than its meager content, then only fitfully user-generated and as-yet unorganized by the dominance of Google’s search algorithms.

The audacious early work of Netherlands-based collective JODI exemplifies this moment. Their quasi-anonymous moniker derives from the identities of its two members, Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans, who began collaborating in 1995; by the decade’s end, JODI would become one of the most recognizable names of the first generation of internet art.”

Ed Halter in 4Columns

If you’re used to being shepherded around a glossy Internet via Google’s search engine or hashtags, the work of the collaborative art duo Jodi — Belgian artists Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans — might feel like another planet. If you can remember using a virus-prone PC in the early aughts, it might feel uncomfortably familiar. [...] Over the years, they have garnered institutional recognition. Last year, New York’s Museum of Modern Art mounted one of the group’s “desktop performances” in their renovated galleries. But in the spirit of Net art’s anti-institutional ethos, Jodi is notoriously evasive, and their work incredibly difficult to pin down. Finding it is part of the fun.”

The Washington Post

“Where do jodi stand in all of this? The answer seems clear enough. They are moderns through and through. There is no jodi work that is not oriented toward the digital as its object and material. There is no jodi work that is not on and about the material. They display, in abundance, that great modernist virtue, self-referentiality. The material of their work is, quite simply, the material itself.”

Alexander R Galloway In: IDN (2016) West, The Hague.

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