27 Oct 2008

GEO GOO (Info Park) by JODI at iMAL, Brussels

JODI (www.jodi.org), the Belgian-Dutch duo pioneer of Net Art, explores the relations between the world we build through the Internet and the one based on our past mental and physical maps. Services such as GoogleMaps have changed radically our worldview by making the Globe accessible as a commercial multi-user surface. Mapping these online geometrical constructs to reality and vice versa, overlaying their figures as jogging paths, The 'Parc Royal' of Brussels (Warande Park) becomes an INFO Park revealing symbols and mysteries of the capitale of Belgium and Europe, amplifying or deconstructing them through an intricate web of data and associations.

For centuries, geometry has been overloaded with symbols, starting from pure mathematical objects to esoteric and mystic signs, hiding in complex figures meanings to be revealed to the gurus, the persons in the know or the psychedelic explorers. Geometrical shapes and lines were drawn on the territories, the cities, the architectures and the monuments or the crop fields. The Royal Parc of Brussels is a well known example with its triangle + circle = Masonic compass. JODI is connecting this long tradition of tracing geometry on the ground with the new geometries one can draw on the surface of the Earth as proposed by online tools such as Google Maps and Google Earth. Of course, the duo of artists draws in a pure JODI style: hectic and free traces resulting from extreme coding and hacking. As they always did since their first web pages in 1995, JODI uses the codes of Internet (e.g. html) and the codes inside the computers (binary) as their artistic material. They paved the way for Net Art and renewed Computer Arts as much as Nam June Paik opened new fields for video art. But the work of JODI plays also with the processes of coding/decoding, of deciphering cryptic data in a chaotic surface. Messages are hidden, only visible to the ones who will dare to dig into the code (see http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org/). In the exhibition GEOGOO (Info Park), many things can be constructed into meanings, it just depends on you and your capacity to disconnect and reconnect: the radial glimpses of the sunshines in the video, the 3 DJ turntables laid on a perfect triangle at the visitor's disposal (backmasking!), the jogging walks through Brussels roundabouts. And if you can not reconfigure, just contemplate, it is beautifully rewarding.

550.8446, 4.3637 Brussels park.

The largest urban public park in the center of Brussels is surrounded by the Royal Palace of Brussels, Fortis bank, Palais des Beaux-arts, the Belgian parliament and the U.S.A. embassy. In the summer, free parties are organized every weekend in the heart of this park.The place is served by Park metro station on line 1A/1B of the Brussels metro.Its main paths and fountain are laid out in the form of Masonic symbols (in particular the compass).

More on http://www.imal.org/GEOGOO
JODI's site : http://geogoo.net

About JODI

Jodi's work (www.jodi.org), the pioneer belgian/dutch duo of Net Art (Joan Heemskerke/NL - Dirk Paesmans/BE), has been included in many international exhibitions and festivals: Documenta X in 1997, Rotterdam (DEAF98), ZKM (net_condition, 2000), Tokyo (2001, 2002), Madrid (Arco/De-game, 2001), Berlin (Transmediale: 1997, 2000, 2002, 2006), New York (1997, 2003, Guggenheim/2004, 2005, 2007), Chicago (ISEA97), Plug-In (Basle, 2002), Paris (Centre Pompidou/2003, 2004, 2006), SFMOMA (San Francisco, 2004), Montevideo (Amsterdam, 2006), or more recently at the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) in the 'Deep Screen - Art in Digital Culture Proposal for Municipal Art Acquisitions 2008'. In 1999, they received a Webby Award in the Arts category, proclaiming in their compulsory five-word acceptance speech, 'Ugly corporate sons of bitches!'

Excerpt from JODI's biography by Domenico Quaranta in Holy Fire, art of the digital age, exhibition catalogue, 2008.