Joan Heemskerk (JODI) — OSS/**** and software-art work

1998

Artists: Joan Heemskerk (JODI), Dirk Paesmans (JODI) · Year: 1998 · Medium: Software-art pieces — operating-system-level interventions, game modifications · Substrate: Custom software (OSS/****, 1998); Wolfenstein 3D modification (SOD, 1999); CD-ROM distribution and online release · Place: Netherlands / Belgium · Institution: Independent (JODI) JODI's work after wwwwwwwww.jodi.org extended beyond web-based intervention into the operating system itself and into the video-game medium. OSS/**** (1998) was a downloadable software package that, when run, took over the user's computer screen with rapidly-shifting glitch imagery apparently indistinguishable from a severe system crash. The user had to restart the machine to recover. The piece was exhibited at Documenta X (1997) and circulated via CD-ROM and internet download. SOD (1999) was JODI's modification of the open-source Wolfenstein 3D first-person shooter game engine. JODI stripped the game of its commercial interface — no weapons visible, no enemy identification, no scoring — and replaced the environment's textures with monochrome geometric patterns. The game still plays as a first-person shooter, but the shooter has no idea what they are supposed to shoot at, why, or whether they have won. SOD is widely recognized as one of the founding works of the "game art" genre. JODI's practice across this period extended the browser-crash logic of wwwwwwwww.jodi.org into different software substrates. The operating system, the game engine, the CD-ROM — each becomes an authoring platform that can be used to produce disturbing experiences that take over the user's control of their own machine. This is a specific kind of artistic intervention that later AI-art and adversarial-computer-vision practices would build on. Both Heemskerk and Paesmans continue to work. Their archive is held by Rhizome and the Van Abbemuseum. Lore Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans had founded JODI in Maastricht in 1995 and were a romantic and professional couple throughout the project's most productive years. They lived modestly in the Netherlands on a combination of Dutch arts grants and small commercial commissions. OSS/**** was distributed partly through art-institution channels and partly through the JODI-controlled distribution server jodi.org, which crashed regularly under traffic load. The pair separated romantically in the early 2000s but continued to collaborate professionally for another decade; the work has been exhibited at MoMA, the Centre Pompidou, and dozens of other major institutions. Heemskerk now lives in Belgium and Paesmans in the Netherlands; they still occasionally produce joint work, but the most active period was the late 1990s through mid-2000s. Sources • Rhizome — JODI Net Art Anthology • Van Abbemuseum — JODI collection • Galloway, Alexander — Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 2006)