JODI at Eyebeam - New York

Operating as Internet provocateurs since the advent of the Web in 1994, JODI (artist-duo Joan Hemmskerk and Dirk Paesmans) were among the pioneers of the field now known as Net art. By creating programs that generate the look of computer crashes, viruses and error messages, JODI has long terrified unsuspecting users with works of art that simulate their worst computer nightmares.

"INSTALL.EXE," the first U.S. exhibition of this team's prodigious output, bravely attempted to translate JODI's pioneering Internet interventions to a traditional gallery space. JET SET WILLY Variations (2002), the most accessible work in the exhibition, is a fun and savvy introduction to JODI's sardonic view of computer history.

Using emulator software--programs that translate antiquated technology to contemporary hardware--the artists present multiple interpretations of one of the first computer games, Jet Set Willy, on a series of 1980s television monitors fitted with early versions of computer keyboards. A precursor to today's Super Mario Brothers multilevel arcade games, Jet Set Willy featured a cartoon character working his way through a simple, two-dimensional obstacle course. But, in JODI's variations on this program, the character and the course have been rendered as rectangles and bar codes that, in fact, correlate to the game's underlying data. In effect, the artists replace the original narrative with the commands of computer programming.

Likewise, in UNTITLED GAME (1996-2001), users are invited to sit at an individual computer station and work their way through more than 10 reinterpretations of the popular action game Quake. In some, the game's original architecture--the cavernous interiors of a medieval castle--is entirely erased, leaving the viewer to play the game solely by its soundtrack of growls, thuds and gunfire. In others, the scenario has been translated into Bridget Riley-like moire patterns or pixelated checkerboards that multiply and shift as the viewer moves the mouse. Those with the where-withal to reach the final level are rewarded by an animation of a high-speed chase through the hallways and dungeons of the castle as if viewed through a kaleidoscope. This supreme example of digital art brilliantly demolishes the illusion that the computer-game player exercises any control over what happens on-screen.

However, JODI's most innovative work is best experienced accidentally, as an inadvertent catastrophe or random act of violence encountered while surfing the Net, an experience which two of the exhibition's installations attempt to convey. (Brave readers might want to visit their Web site: www.jodi.org.) MY DESKTOP, consisting of four DVD projections on monumental screens, shows JODI's nifty ability to take over the icons and error messages of an ordinary desktop and turn them into an ever-exploding Dadaist collage. INSTALL.EXE, which gave the exhibition its name, requires viewers to log on to the Internet and launch JODI-generated programs on laptops that have been retooled by the artists. Defying our expectations of user-friendly interactivity, these Internet-based works are not easy to navigate or to decipher.

JODI's works have been alternatively interpreted as digital examples of concrete poetry or as Fluxus-type art actions for 21st-century audiences. They also serve as reminders of the lengths to which users will go to try to operate even the most incoherent computer programs. As such, JODI's project can be read as both a critique of the utopian promises of a computer industry that marketed the PC as a tool for personal liberation, then enslaved consumers to its operating systems, and as an acutely accurate representation of the average user's typical frustrations with Windows XP.

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