![JODI 1pixelpusher at Showroom MAMA](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/JODI_1pixelpusher_at_Showroom_MAMA.jpg)
Jodi, is a
collective of two internet artists, Joan Heemskerk (born 1968 in
Kaatsheuvel
Kaatsheuvel () is a town in the province of North Brabant, Netherlands situated along highways N261 and N628. With a population of roughly 16,600, it is the largest town in and the capital of the municipality of Loon op Zand, which also consists o ...
, the
Netherlands
)
, anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau")
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) and Dirk Paesmans (born 1965 in
Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
,
Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...
), created in 1994. They were some of the first artists to create
Web art and later started to create
software art
Software art is a work of art where the creation of software, or concepts from software, play an important role; for example software applications which were created by artists and which were intended as artworks. As an artistic discipline software ...
and
artistic computer game modification. Their most well-known art piece is their website wwwwwwwww.jodi.org, which is a landscape of intricate designs made in basic HTML.
JODI is represented by Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam.
The artists
Joan Heemskerk was born in 1968 in
Kaatsheuvel
Kaatsheuvel () is a town in the province of North Brabant, Netherlands situated along highways N261 and N628. With a population of roughly 16,600, it is the largest town in and the capital of the municipality of Loon op Zand, which also consists o ...
, the
Netherlands
)
, anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands
, established_title = Before independence
, established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
, and Dirk Paesmans was born in 1965 in
Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
,
Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...
. They both have a background in
photography
Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employe ...
and
video art
Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting ...
and studied at
San Jose State University
San José State University (San Jose State or SJSU) is a public university in San Jose, California. Established in 1857, SJSU is the oldest public university on the West Coast and the founding campus of the California State University (CSU) sy ...
in California. Paesmans also studied at
Kunstakademie Dusseldorf with the founder of video art
Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super h ...
.
Both Heemskerk and Paesmans live and work out of the
Netherlands
)
, anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands
, established_title = Before independence
, established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
.
Artworks
In 1999 they began the practice of modifying old video games such as ''
Wolfenstein 3D
''Wolfenstein 3D'' is a first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by Apogee Software and FormGen. Originally released on May 5, 1992, for DOS, it was inspired by the 1981 Muse Software video game '' Castle Wolfe ...
'' to create
art mods like ''SOD''. Their efforts were celebrated in the
1999 Webby Awards, where they took top prize in the category of "
net art
upright=1.3, "Simple Net Art Diagram", a 1997 work by Michael Sarff and Tim Whidden
Internet art (also known as net art) is a form of new media art distributed via the Internet. This form of art circumvents the traditional dominance of the phys ...
." Jodi used their 5-word acceptance speech (a Webby Award tradition) to criticize the event with the words "Ugly commercial sons of bitches." Further video game modifications soon followed for ''
Quake'', ''
Jet Set Willy
''Jet Set Willy'' is a platform video game originally written by Matthew Smith for the ZX Spectrum home computer. It was published in 1984 by Software Projects and ported to most home computers of the time.
The game is a sequel to '' Man ...
'', and the latest, ''
Max Payne 2
''Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne'' is a 2003 third-person shooter video game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Rockstar Games. It is the sequel to 2001's ''Max Payne (video game), Max Payne'' and the second game in the ''Ma ...
'' (2006), to create a new set of
art games. Jodi's approach to game modification is comparable in many ways to
deconstructivism
Deconstructivism is a movement of postmodern architecture which appeared in the 1980s. It gives the impression of the fragmentation of the constructed building, commonly characterised by an absence of obvious harmony, continuity, or symmetry. ...
in architecture because they would disassemble the game to its basic parts, and reassemble it in ways that do not make intuitive sense. In one of their more well-known modifications of ''Quake'' places, the player inside a closed cube with swirling black-and-white patterns on each side. The pattern is the result of a glitch in the
game engine discovered by the artists, presumably, through trial and error; it is generated live as the
Quake engine
The ''Quake'' engine is the game engine developed by id Software to power their 1996 video game '' Quake''. It featured true 3D real-time rendering and is now licensed under the terms of GNU General Public License v2.0 or later.
After rele ...
tries, and fails, to visualize the interior of a cube with black-and-white checkered wallpaper.
"Screen Grab" Period (2002- )
Since 2002, they have been in what has been called their "Screen Grab" period, making video works by recording the computer monitor's output while working, playing video games, or coding. Jodi's "Screen Grab" period began with the four-screen video installation ''My%Desktop'' (2002), which premiered at the Plugin Media Lab in Basel. The piece appeared to depict mammoth
Mac OS 9 computers running amok: opening windows cascaded across the screen, error messages squawked, and files replicated themselves endlessly. But this was not a computer gone haywire, but a computer user gone haywire. To make this video, Jodi pointed-and-clicked and dragged-and-dropped so frantically, it seemed that no human could be in control of such chaos. As graphics exploded across the screen, the viewer gradually realized that what had initially appeared to be a computer glitch was really the work of an irrational, playful, or crazed human.
Their exhibition ''Jodi: goodmorning goodnight'' was on display at the
Whitney Museum
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...
from 2013–2015. Another project, ''OXO'' (2018), was displayed at the
Lightbox Gallery at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
. The piece is an interactive multichannel installation based on old computer games and
tic-tac-toe
Tic-tac-toe (American English), noughts and crosses (Commonwealth English), or Xs and Os (Canadian or Irish English) is a paper-and-pencil game for two players who take turns marking the spaces in a three-by-three grid with ''X'' or ''O''. ...
. ''"Difference Engine"'' was also on display at the
And/Or Gallery in
Pasadena, California, during the same year. The exhibition marked Jodi's first solo show in the
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...
area.
A 2012
''Vice'' magazine article said JODI's work "underlines the innate anarchy of the online medium, an arena that we've come to recognize as public but one that the duo constantly undermines and tweaks to their own purposes."
As of October 2019, JODI’s iconic work My%Desktop (2002), is part of the permanent collection presentation of the new MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York. The work is presented as a monumental installation of four adjacent projections, showing screen grabs of JODI’s desktop-performance.
Collections
The work of JODI is represented in the permanent collection of the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
,
ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
The ZKM , Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (until March 2016: ZKM Center for Art and Media Technology), a cultural institution, was founded in 1989. and since 1997 is located in a listed industrial building in Karlsruhe, Germany, a former muni ...
,
among other venues.
See also
*
net.art
net.art refers to a group of artists who have worked in the medium of Internet art since 1994. Some of the early adopters and main members of this movement include Vuk Ćosić, Jodi.org, Alexei Shulgin, Olia Lialina, Heath Bunting, Daniel Gar ...
*
Superbad.com
*
New media art
New media art includes artworks designed and produced by means of electronic media technologies, comprising virtual art, computer graphics, computer animation, digital art, interactive art, sound art, Internet art, video games, robotics, 3D pri ...
References
Sources
*
*
*
*
* Conner, Michael. (2013). Required Reading: A Closer Look at JODI's 'Untitled Game'. Rhizome Journal. http://rhizome.org/editorial/2013/oct/16/required-reading-closer-look-jodis-untitled-game/
* Galloway, Alexander. (2016) Jodi's Infrastructure. E-flux Journal #74. http://www.e-flux.com/journal/74/59810/jodi-s-infrastructure/
* Saltiel, Natalie. (2011). From the Rhizome Artbase: %20 Wrong (2000)-JODI. Rhizome Journal. http://rhizome.org/editorial/2011/jul/5/20wrong-jodi-artbase/?ref=search_title.
External links
jodi.orgFull archive of JodiTalk with Dirk Peasmans, May 2006by JODI at
Electronic Arts Intermix
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is a nonprofit arts organization that is a resource for video
Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first develope ...
br>
eai.org
with a wider explanation of one of Jodi´s early works.
map.jodi.orgsod.jodi.orgFrom the Rhizome Artbase: %20wrong (2000)- JODI
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jodi (Art Collective)
Net.artists
Belgian contemporary artists
Webby Award winners