Jodi
also: JODI · jodi.org
JODI is a Dutch-Belgian art collective - the duo Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans, founded in 1994 - and among the earliest and most influential practitioners of net art. Trained in photography and video at the CADRE Laboratory for New Media in California (Paesmans also studied with Nam June Paik), they turned the raw material of the early web - HTML code, browser errors, ASCII - into art, stripping software down to its disassembled parts and reassembling it in ways that resist sense, much like deconstructivist architecture. From 1999 they applied the same method to classic video games such as Wolfenstein 3D and Quake, and since 2002 their 'Screen Grab' videos have recorded chaotic desktop performances; My%Desktop (2002) is now in MoMA's collection. A 1999 Webby Award and a Whitney Museum survey (2013-2015) confirmed their canonical status.
Defining characteristics
- Raw HTML and source code as visual material: blue hyperlinks, system fonts, page code on display
- Deliberate glitches, crashes, and error messages staged as spectacle
- Black-and-white checkerboard patterns and engine artifacts from disassembled games
- Software and game interfaces subverted into behaving against their own logic
- Desktop-screen chaos: cascading windows, endless file replication, frantic mouse work on video
- Typographic noise and ASCII graphics with a deliberately unfinished, anti-commercial look
Key figures
- Joan Heemskerk (b. 1968) — Dutch half of the duo; co-founder of JODI's raw-web and screen-grab practice
- Dirk Paesmans (b. 1965) — Belgian video artist (trained with Nam June Paik) who co-founded JODI
Example works
- SOD (Wolfenstein 3D art mod) — JODI (1999)
- My%Desktop — JODI (2002)
- OXO — JODI (2018)
Sources
- Jodi - Wikipedia encyclopedia