wwwwwwwww.jodi.org (Draft)

TOPIC: Introduce one example of digital/network art that you consider to be a work of art. Explain why you consider this piece artwork to be a work of art, showing how it fits the particular definition of art that support. To support your argument refer to the work of scholars of digital art as well as the work of scholars who have defined art.

Link of the work: http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org/

Introduction

wwwwwwwww.jodi.org (known as JODI/jodi.org) is a Net art project, which first appeared online in 1993. It is a collective artwork of two internet artists, Joan Heemskerk from the Netherlands and Dirk Paesmans from Belgium. The collective moniker is a portmanteau of the first two letters of their first names. They use computer programming and the HTML to create Jodi.org.

Description of the work

JODI.org. is the large and most iconic website of JODI’s works. Its homepage is a screen of garbled green text, a massive structure of complicatedly designed patterns and graphics laid out in the basic HTML. Also, JODI.org is full of strange corners and dead ends, collections of strange pages that seem to go nowhere until exactly the right link is clicked or the right passageway found. It’s created to be confusing, to make viewers think twice about what they expect from the internet.

Key quotes about the work

“Jodi.org contributes one of the most achieved and sophisticated body of work to be found at this point. While at first their work can be perceived as formal, it is also undeniable that its conceptual grounding is only partly concealed by a sharp sense of humor. Revealing the potential dysfunctionality of the machine, and thus commenting on the relationship we maintain with them, they offer the viewer an opportunity to think about how the advent of micro-mechanics has profoundly transformed the nature of this relationship.”

-          Benjamin Weil, the Curator of Media Arts at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,

 “There are interfaces so commonplace that we hardly notice them anymore. The computer presents itself as a desktop, with a little trash can bottom right, pull-down menus, scroll bars, system icons. With its `interface in your face' approach, the website ofjodi.org might be an antidote to our obliviousness to interface standardization.”

-          Christiane Paul, an author, a scholar and a professor of Visual Art at The New School

Evaluation of the work

To my point of views, I think JODI.org. is a work of art.

   It contains contents and ideas. It combined by many pieces of conceptual art’s images. The images we seen just depends on what link is clicked. We cannot understand every patterns, errors and texts which appeared in JODI.org. directly. However, there should be some concepts or ideas expressed in JODI’s work and it arrangement.

  It contains aesthetic. Many art elements are used by JODI. For example, there is the use of repetition. The wavy lines, curved shapes, repeated forms and color are kept repeating and created rhythm. We can see the repetition of art elements is used in an organized and regular way. This gives us a sense of wholeness and unity.

“Their developers themselves must begin to act as if they believe that their medium is an art form. They must treat their work as an art form and act as if they expect the public to do the same.”

- Ernest W. Adams