Deliberately Distorting the Digital Mechanism

April 21, 2003

By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL

While tinkering recently with one of the first personal

computers from the 1980's, the digital artists Joan

Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans took a look at its technical

tutorial. As Mr. Paesmans recalled, the on-screen guide

delivered a reassuring message: "Remember, don't be scared.

You cannot do anything wrong on this computer."

Since 1994 Ms. Heemskerk and Mr. Paesmans, collaborating

under the name Jodi, have created a series of

Internet-based artworks that deliberately cause computers

to do the wrong thing. Viewers of these online works will

find their screens filled with meaningless text and

needlessly blinking graphics. Web-browser windows spawn

smaller windows that race maddeningly around the screen.

Links that appear to lead somewhere yield dead ends. Like a

sci-fi thriller, this could be delightful, except that the

underlying premise is of computers in complete control. A

terrifying thought.

Beginning tomorrow Jodi will be the subject of a

retrospective exhibition, "install.exe," at Eyebeam, a

new-media art center in Manhattan. It was organized at

Plug.In, a new-media art center in Basel, Switzerland,

where it was shown last fall before it traveled to Berlin.

The exhibit, which runs through June 14 at Eyebeam's

gallery at 540 West 21st Street, contains nearly two dozen

works. Many of them can also be viewed online at

www.jodi.org, asdfg.jodi.org, 404.jodi.org,

wrongbrowser.com and wwwwwwwww.jodi.org.

Prepare to be disoriented, if not stuck, in a World Wide

Web gone awry. The Web is less than a decade old, so it

might seem premature to declare that Jodi's works are

classics of Internet art. Yet these artists were probably

the first to use the Internet's own visual language to

create what are in effect paintings of the Internet

landscape. They did so by exposing the hidden computer code

that makes Web pages do what they do, then altered its odd

texts and strange symbols so that they became abstract art.

They also took Web features and simulated what would happen

if they ran amok. For people who assume that a computer is

a benign dictator, these were reminders that the slightest

transgression could turn it into a deranged despot.

Like Cezanne's late works in which the raw canvas is often

part of the painting, Jodi's sites force viewers to become

conscious of the Web's appealing surface and the digital

mechanism that lurks below.

Annette Schindler, the director of Plug.In and the

co-curator of "install .exe," said, "You think you know

your computer, but really all you know is a surface on your

screen." This state of affairs is based on the foolish hope

that our technology, like our cars, will always operate

properly, so that we never have to look at the oily, gritty

bits under the hood. But Jodi subverts this notion.

Visitors to the duo's Web sites, Ms. Schindler said,

"immediately have the experience that Jodi wants to give

them, which is, `What if everything goes wrong?' "

In questioning the Internet's rules, Jodi has had a huge

influence on digital artists.

"They are the only Internet-based artists that have created

a truly new aesthetic," said the male half of the anonymous

digital-art duo known as 0100101110101101.org in a recent

phone call. "They have influenced almost everything on the

Internet that is related to art," he said. "It's like

trying to find a painter who was not influenced by

Michelangelo."

Ms. Heemskerk and Mr. Paesmans were resident artists at San

Jose State University in the heart of Silicon Valley in

1994, at the start of the dot-com era. One day while

working on a Web project they accidentally omitted a

bracket from the computer code, and the resulting Web page

was a messy jumble of text and characters. They liked what

they saw and began to experiment.

Mr. Paesmans said they initially wondered if it was ethical

to transmit the "wrong" code to others. "But we found out

quite fast that when you make mistakes in this code, it

doesn't affect anything other than the image it creates,"

he said. They began to put their works online, where the

results were intensely perplexing to those expecting clear

information and helpful links. They became even more

interested in the Internet once they realized that they

were "disillusioning the beliefs of people," Mr. Paesmans

said.

They called themselves Jodi, a combination of the first two

letters of their first names. Each new project attracted

greater attention and not just in Internet-art circles.

Their dark, impenetrable works contributed to the early

Web's spirit of coolness. Ms. Heemskerk, from the

Netherlands, and Mr. Paesmans, from Belgium, moved to

Barcelona and gave few interviews, making themselves even

more mysterious.

Like many digital artists they have started to work with

computer games. But while others' projects typically keep a

game's realistic setting while making minor modifications

to its scenery or characters, Jodi is again making abstract

art. For its version of the Wolfenstein game, for instance,

the dog becomes a black square and a dwarf the white one.

And in their adaption of the first Quake game, the viewer

sees only a white screen and must navigate through the 3-D

spaces on sound alone. In an art form where excess is the

rule, Jodi has stripped games to digital skeletons.

All of these works, along with several recent game and

video projects, will be shown in the "install.exe"

exhibition. Installing screen-based work, usually viewed in

private, in a vast public gallery like Eyebeam's will

certainly be a different kind of challenge to Jodi, but it

may also attract a larger audience.

Benjamin Weil, Eyebeam's curator, said that for most people

the gallery was "an interface that's a lot more accessible

than the Internet." But Jodi is still seeking fresh ways to

disorient. Visitors who want to view the online works must

carry one of the gallery's laptop computers to a foam-cube

seat. When they open the computer, its screen shows a view

from the seat, as though the computer were functioning as a

live camera.

Tilman Baumgaertel, the exhibition's co-curator and the

editor of its catalog, said Jodi's vision was "about the

deconstruction of technology, the abuse of technology and

looking for different opportunities within the technology."

Mr. Paesmans put it this way: He wants people to understand

that they "have the freedom to be irresponsible in front of

your computer."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/21/arts/design/21MIRA.html?ex=1051934966&ei=1&en=da7781d821436508