jodi.org Overview

Artists often talk about how they hope their work will fundamentally transform the way their audience thinks, perceives, or experiences reality. As members of that monolithic cultural phenomenon "the audience," we should, perhaps, wonder what certain works are doing to our... [more]

Artists often talk about how they hope their work will fundamentally transform the way their audience thinks, perceives, or experiences reality. As members of that monolithic cultural phenomenon "the audience," we should, perhaps, wonder what certain works are doing to our minds. One piece in particular that seems to disrupt our expectations and thwart the conventional pathways of our thought is the anonymous web-art site "jodi.org." Dynamic, confrontational, abstract, and disruptive, jodi.org leaves us little to hold on to. Floating in a small sea of flashing colors and shapes, our eyes have no anchor, and our brains feel like they might begin to implode. It is difficult to describe jodi.org accurately because it looks different on different visits. Adding to its anti-aesthetic effect is its lack of a coherent identity. More than any abstract painting -- which inevitably must remain static -- and even more than any abstract or surreal video -- which, at best, must rerun on a perpetual loop -- jodi.org avoids easily recognizable patterns and associations, creating an effect that feels truly alien to our structure-habituated minds. The ephemeral and ever-changing nature of jodi.org, ensured by the artists behind the concept, Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans, makes any review of the site obsolete. Don't be surprised if what you read about it in one place contradicts what you read about it elsewhere. Or, perhaps you should be surprised, for that is what the site wants you to be: surprised to find that reality may not be as clearly structured as we would like to think. [show less]