JoDi

JoDi, or jodi.org, is a collective of two artists. Since the mid-1990s they started to create original artworks of net.art. They decided to put the work immediately on the screen, without press releases and without their bio, just jodi.org. They don’t use their site to present information. They present screens and things that are happening in these screens. Probably they are Joan Heemskerk (born 1968 in Kaatsheuvel, the Netherlands) and Dirk Paesmans (born 1965 in Brussels, Belgium).

JoDi , Not Found, 1998, Software, internet browser (courtesy of the artists)

Not Found is a classic piece of net.art from the 1990s. The home page refers to “error 404 or not found”, a standard message stating that the server has not found the page requested. move the cursor over the browser’s status bar and links to three sections appear – unread, reply, and unsent – revealing an e-mail environment. Each page provides space for a message and a ‘re-‘ button to reply. Just like any mail client, users can write a message and send it. Jodi’s programme however rewrites the message in another window at the top of the screen, without vowels, or without consonants, or as black text on a black background. The result is a string of guttural and hissing words, incomprehensible computer residue, useless waste, debris, an error.