jodi is the name that Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans have been using for some years to exhibit their work. Their work is mainly on the Internet in the form of unconventional and radical Web sites – exciting sites to visit. More so than with a book we skim through and unlike video art, the end quality of Net.art is partly determined by the medium. On the Internet a work only exists after a connection has been made. A CD-Rom is quite different, but uses some of the same technology, language and symbolism. This work is not connected to a network, but it is also not a program with a start and a finish, and every computer reacts differently to it. 'OSS/***' is not a story with push buttons and beautiful pictures. The program uses and manipulates the contents of the computer it is being run on, creating new images. Sometimes it takes over and is almost impossible to operate. That is also the challenge. The artists force the user to be more than just a spectator. Not to become a part of it, but to take a standpoint in a landscape both unknown and trusted. The image is very recognizable: the bitmaps, the cybernetic symbolism, unreadable symbols tell an abstract story, first psychedelically, then very naturally, or give warning that the computer has crashed. jodi's highly visual multimedia designs are not applied design, but almost studies of material that repeat the observations and actions in electronic space. Interaction is the doorway to an abstract reality, which is not the simulation of an existing, real world, but a world in itself in which a crashed computer is just as much directed communication as is corresponding by e-mail, having a telephone conversation, or zapping past numerous television channels.
– Walter v.d. Cruysen
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Joan Heemskerk ° 1968, Kaatsheuvel (The Netherlands)
Dirk Paesmans ° 1963, Brussels (Belgium)
Live and work in The Netherlands
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