PHOTOS: from “Geogoo” and “Thumbing”
Since the days of dial-up, the mysterious artists behind jodi.org have been turning the web into a Dadaist canvas through deranged ASCII-leaking websites, viral CD-ROMs, three-dimensional video installations and haunted video game modifications. All along they tweak our idea of technology by using it, precisely, all the wrong ways.Late last year, we arranged to interview them at the Eyebeam gallery in New York, not knowing what kinds of dark hackers we would meet. But the Internet of course does funny things to expectations. It turns out the collective consists of a pair of soft-spoken artists named Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans ("jo" + "di"), from Belgium and Holland respectively.They live and work in Holland, but they exist through a seemingly infinite stream of web domains, each of which contains a new rabbit hole, a new opportunity for your computer to get possessed. Take "GeoGoo" (2008), for instance: Jodi hacks Google Maps to lead you on a frenetic, psychedelic world tour by way of abstract geometric shapes, Masonic symbolism, and geopolitical markers. Its classic Jodi: confusing, scary and sublime. Sit back and see it for yourself here.Their latest project, exhibited in a recently opened show at Hong Kong's Videotage gallery, asks Internet users to submit timestamps from around the technological universe of 10/10/10, what they call "the most digital day ever in our digital age." Its a sign of Jodi's continual shift in attention, from static webpages to the social spaces of Web 2.0 and beyond, where personalization and participation have the power to make everyone an artist, accidentally or not.Needless to say, they prefer the accidental kind.Read more and review some of their projects at their Wikipedia page. And see more Motherboard episodes, including pieces on net artists like Alexei Shulgin and Cory Arcangel.Follow Motherboard on Twitter and Facebook.
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