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"Interactivity", Image, Text, and Context in 404.jodi.org.

Introduction: How my computer and I fell in love with Jodi.

What? Damn!, you...you...(I jump up from my desk and start hurling abuse at the computer which looks like it is in the middle of a big, juicy crash.) Its...Oh! mmmm! And that was it, We were smitten. It slowly dawned on me that my computer, far from crashing was whispering sweet bytes down my modem to a server it truly identified with: at 404.jodi.org, the creation of two European artists Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans. It is a website designed to interrogate its context and its various media: computer generated gif/jpeg images*1, CGI programmes*2, Javascripts*3, ASCII characters*4, and pure HTML*5.

"Again and again: 'What is Net art?' instead of (for example):"Browser interface in the structure of Net art" or "Downloading time as a means of expression in the works of Eastern European net artists"*6

This initiative calling for incisive "net art" criticism championed by Olia lialina demands that net artists, critics, and theorists refine their attitudes towards a fast developing net art world. There are still 100 sites of dross for every quality art site, "on-line galleries" of paintings, sculptures, and prints that have been digitally photographed, labelled and presented as "glorified catalogues"*7" on the screen at 72 dpi*8. I aim to show that jodi.org has marked a vital point in the development of an artistically viable language and approach to making artwork on the net.

404.jodi.org is as much a product of the web as a reflection on it, and so must be looked at with reference to artists, theorists and hackers who have contributed to the wealth of the net. I will limit the extent of this text by looking at two areas within jodi's practice, "interactivity", and the interplay of text, image, and programming.

"Not Found; unread, reply and unsent"

One of the most apparent artistic uses of the net is its capacity for so-called "interactivity". In Jenny Holzer's "Please Change Beliefs" (hosted at adaweb*9 since early 96), Holzer addresses notions of authorship, authority and "interactivity". She posits net art publishing as a collaborative editorial act rather than an autonomous act of creation. "Please Change Beliefs"*10 is an adaptation of the "Truisms" which Holzer installed in Times square in 1986.

"they [Truisms] were short enough to get across the abyss of distraction...".*11

The slogans cross the "abyss of distraction", which is no longer the bustle of times square, but the fragmented, multi-layered windows of a computer desktop, and the urge to move on that is implicit in a hyperlinked page. "Please Change Beliefs" asks users to alter the "beliefs" presented rather than change their own. Holzer demands an editorial act rather than the ideological submission to "Truisms". Users are invited to edit the beliefs, or supply their own alternatives, and then vote on their favourite. This creates a "Chinese whisper" effect, the texts flow from Holzer classics such as "ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE" (voted favourite) to typical anonymous web banter; "ABUSE OF FLOWER-POWER COMES AS NO SUNRISE". The Truisms lose their didactic nature, swamped by thousands of alternatives and revisions; they become comments or opinions, starting points for discussion rather than declared absolutes. The notion of the author disappears as material is added to the enormous database, and interpolated with hyperlinks. The "Truisms" in Times Square were public, monumental, and seemingly validated, whereas the "belief" is presented to the individual as one line of a list, an editable text in a textbox, or as a blinking sentence that is replaced by another every five seconds. The textual "interactivity" apparent in the reliance on 'user input'

suggests a construction of net communications as empowering democratic technologies, promoting the expression of self-determined attitudes. However, the seemingly endless lists of responses are unreadable; individual entries are buried in the mass.

"...We must ask ourselves if these democratic characteristics actually constitute democracy. A platform for individual voices is not enough (especially in the Web where so many voices are lost in the clutter of data debris)."*12

In "Utopian Promises, Net Realities" The Critical Art Ensemble identifies and outlines several problems with the utopian view of a net culture "democratised" through interactivity. These include problems of geographical separation*13, disciplinary control through surveillance and censorship, as well as the difficulty of voices being "lost in the clutter of data debris". Jodi's "interactivity" scrutinises the act of e-mail communication. The contributor's input is deliberately re-constituted incomprehensibly to resemble, and mix with "data debris".

"Not Found" is a network of four pages. The title page displays the words "404.jodi.org"*14. When the cursor finds them, the status bar*15 announces three linked sections; "Unread", "Reply", and "Unsent".

"Unread" is a horizontally bisected window. On the bottom half is a text input area with an e-mail response button "Re-". The frame above displays a text of consonants and punctuation marks. The user can write a message in the text box, and send it. Jodi's CGI programme writes the message into the top window, minus the vowels. The e-mail is fragmented into unpronounceable strings of gutturals and sibilants, articulation is negated, strangling the text encoded voice of the user. "Interactivity" is frustrated. When viewing "Unread", it is not unusual to find a string of consonants followed by "fck! fck! fck!". Whereas the user is independent in editing Holzer's truisms, Jodi performs an act of censorship. On many mainstream "chat" sites, user input which is considered inappropriate (swear words, and other undesirable keywords) is edited in similar ways with the same technology (CGI, mostly). The fact that chat boards on Yahoo and AOL have instituted this censorship (sometimes replacing keywords with euphemisms rather than editing them out altogether) has caused people to use interesting variations of the spelling of expletives. Users have found such a loophole in Jodi's CGI, using vowels such as å, é, î, ø, ü and sometimes ¥.

"Reply" has the same frameset*16, but the result of sending mail is different; the top window records the information sent by the user as hidden text (black text on a black background), but overtly displays only the IP location of the user. The user's IP identity is broadcast as a vibrant green text. The loss of assumed web-anonymity, and having identifying traces stored on a database is jarring.

"Unsent" again consists of the same frameset, but the top window contains the vowels that were left out of the initial ("Unread") mail, as if they have been filtered out and left there as a residue-"unsent". The vowels form long vocal lines of text "aaeeeeeiooooooooo". The notion of "Interactivity", one of the buzz words used to great effect in Internet hype is fragmented and problematized. Jodi censors and conceals user input, records details and negates the communicative impulse. The phonetic, the wailing voice of the message; "aeeeeioooooyuuu" remains "unsent".

Text as image, Images of text.

On entering "GoodTimes"*17, another section of Jodi.org, the user is confronted with a dense mass of text flowing across the page (made to scroll vertically down the screen by a Javascript autoscroll*18). There are two levels of text present on the screen, a surface text, varying in size and colour and containing links, and a background made from tiled*19 images of text. This convolution of text, and images of text constantly shifts from text to texture, as a word or phrase is read, and then automatically scrolls on, merging with the shifting mass of light and colour.

Rudolf Freiling, in "Hot Spots, Text in motion and the Textscape of Electronic Media"*20 cites the work of Joseph Kosuth as an example of this interplay between text and texture, between foreground and background. The phrase "It was It" written in neon is mounted on a wall in front of another text. Words are abstracted into form. Freiling posits the meaning of the work in the spatial relations of the two texts. The texts in "Goodtimes" can be examined in relation to Kosuth's piece. The screens of flowing text negate textuality and frustrate the urge to decipher. There is a dialogue set up between surface (text) and background (image). This interplay between text and image highlights the element of tautology inherent in the use of HTML. The page presented on in browser window is fragile and permeable. The workings and marks left by the author are not usually shown on the surface, as is the case in certain forms of artistic practice, such as the fingerprint on a Rodin, for example. To rupture the surface of the web page, all one has to do is "view document source" and the user can read the HTML code used to write the page. This code contains file references*21, Javascripts, notes, and, tautologically, the raw text used in the page. However, this text is displayed uniformly, the HTML tags containing positional and typesetting references still show. Jodi's texts, images and hypertexts merge into one. The positional references and various codes, ( often graphically similar to those used to generate the page or the Javascript behaviour) create the surface texture as they scroll across the screen. The use of ASCII characters to form an image is not limited to "smileys", or characters used to "emote" in a text based communication. For example:

the plebeian, simple smiley:

 : )  
a more complex character:
*<|:o)

It is also a time honoured hacking/phreaking*22 tradition, used in text based communication (usually hack/phreak bbs's*23 ) to describe how to wire up all kinds of illicit telephone security bypasses and other fantastic criminal creations.

                   (green wire)



                              _________________________/---\
    (Telephone wire)         /                         | 0  |
                            /                          \___/
      §§§==================|    (headphone wire)             
(headphones)
                            \
                             \_________________________/---\
                                 (red wire)            | 0  |
                                                       \___/  see note
*24

This is also used in heading, or personalising documents :*25



          _   _                                            _   _
         ((___))                                          ((___))
         [ x x ]           cDc communications             [ x x ]
          \   /                presents...                 \   /
          (` ')                                            (` ')
          
(U)                                                                     
(U)    

If the text is transferred into a different format, it can screw up the spacing and syntax (unless you are reading this as e-mail or in a browser in which case it will look fine - try copypasting it into word... *26):


                                           ___
    [1]           [2]       [3]     [4]   | S |  [5]       [6]      [7]
     ________   _________  ______         | w |         ________  
______
    |        | |        | |      |   __   | i |   __   |        | |     
|
\/\/|Sampling|-|Quantize|-|Encode|__|  |__| t |__| 
|__|Decoding|-|Filter|/\/
    |________| |________| |______|        | c |        |________|
|______|
 |            |                       |   |_h_|    |
 |           PAM                     PCM         
PCM                       |
Analog Signal (You Talking)             /      \             Analog
Signal__|
                                   /               \
                              /                        \
                         /                                 \
                    /                                          \
      Blow Up /   of the Switch                                     \
        /                                                              
\
 
/                                                                       
\
                        ___________________________
           _____       |                           |       _____
   1    T |     | T  1 |                           | 1  T |     |    1
   -------|  T  |------|                           |------|  T  |-----
          |_____|      |                           |      |_____|
           _____       |                           |       _____
   2    T |     | T  2 |            S              | 2  T |     |    2
   -------|  T  |------|           mxn             |------|  T  |-----
          |_____|   o  |                           |  o   |_____|
           _____    o  |                           |  o    _____
   m    T |     | T  m |                           | n  T |     |    n
   -------|  T  |------|                           |------|  T  |-----
          |_____|      |                           |      |_____|
                       |___________________________|
                       

This diagram is more than reminiscent of Jodi's lines of flowing characters and text. Every now and then the viewer catches a word, but meaning is dissolved into a bewildering image composed of ASCII characters.

"Are we still reading, or are we looking at images that appear and vanish before we have had the time to grasp their potential meaning?"*27

Freiling could be answered aptly by Mcluhan's observations on "hot"*28 printed text and "cool" televisual, or computerised texture.

"Print asks for the isolated and stripped down visual faculty, not for the unified sensorium"*29

Mcluhan created the mosaic script as a way of bypassing the strictures of text. For Mcluhan, the fragmentation of the word into elements which could be re-assembled by the viewer "cooled" the medium of print. The word became an arrangement of images that allowed the user to access the concept by re-assembling the image into text and then internally vocalising the word. The fact that the first graphical browser was in fact called "Mosaic"*30 is probably no coincidence. Jodi incorporates sound, image and "cooled", pixellated*31 text in this "unified sensorium". Meaning is absorbed almost by osmosis. Jodi's texts as such are dysfunctional. They cannot be "read". A word or phrase permeates through the mesh of textures and simultaneously is caught in the constant lapse of text into "tactile" image.

Programme as Context

Jodi's creative use of CGI and Javascript programming is, at this time, unique. The overwhelming use of programming in net art is very functional, and I suspect borrowed from other Javascript and CGI libraries. This I attribute to the poor provision of high level technical skill training for artists, who must make do with scripts and programmes written and edited by computer scientists for entirely different ends. Jodi has used or edited it's own programmes, and this is one of the most convincing aspects of the work.

"The cathedral leaves it's locale to be received in the studio of a lover of art, the choral production, performed in an auditorium or in the open air, resounds in a drawing room."*32

As Benjamin points out in relation to the mechanically produced representation of an "original", context is central to meaning of a work of art. The difficulty in making art for the net is foremost a problem of context. In Benjamin's analysis, the reproductive apparatus

"substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence"*33

The work of net art has no unique existence to substitute. It exists in part as data stored on the server at www.jodi.org, but is viewed, edited and curated fleetingly and simultaneously by remote users in any number of contexts. How can a work be put it into context, when that context may be simultaneously a gallery, a bedroom, an office and a laptop in a caravan? Jodi has found an answer. The art work exists in the computer and builds relationships relative to that framework. The image, or text on a computer is alien to the computer. Only the programme can serve as a method, and as a context of communication between the user, the computer, and the artist. Jodi writes programmes (such as the e-mail CGIs mentioned above) designed to create dysfunctional models of computer behaviour. Much like the endeavour of the hackers, phreakers, and virus merchants that Jodi associates itself with, the work of net art becomes an act of investigation and discovery, programming for programming's sake perhaps.

"We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals"

Just substitute "artist" for "criminal" (no-one will notice) in the Mentor's immortal, if ideologically flawed "Conscience of a Hacker"*34.

Conclusion

"Artist after artist has taken up the grid. ...by peeling back layer after layer of representation to come at last to this schematised reduction."*35

In "Originality and the Avant-Guarde", Rosalind Krauss identifies one of the projects of Modernism, to free artistic communication from the strictures of representation. She focuses on the use of the grid as a starting point;

"[a] newly evacuated space of an aesthetic purity and freedom."*36

This stripping down of representation, and a notion of finding the fundament of the craft could be likened to the project of Jodi.org. Jodi does not remove, or "evacuate" representation, but negates. Image is negated as it becomes text, text is negated as it dissolves into texture, and context is situated and contained as programme within the body of the computer. It is with this identification of a basis that Jodi facilitates its bizarre and compelling communications.

Saul Albert. 4/4/98

Notes & Bibliography

if you are familiar with web authoring, then sorry for the patronising technical notes.

I do not consider my interpretations of jodi to be in any way "correct" they are my personal views.

  1. < "gif" and "jpeg" are two types of computer generated images that can be displayed over the internet through most popular browsers.
  2. < A CGI, or "Common Gateway Interface" programme is used to process and return data sent via e-mail from a visitor of a website to the server computer
  3. < "Javascript" is a simple "scripting" language that can be written into a webpage to create "interactive" behaviours and functions that are then processed and displayed by the user's computer.
  4. < "ASCII", "American Standard Code for Information Interchange" - computer based text characters. You are reading ASCII characters at the moment.
  5. < "HTML" : "Hypertext Mark-up Language" is the language in which webpages are written. Html is basically normal text, but it contains positional, and formatting instructions which enable the browser to display text and image in a graphically organised designed window.
  6. < Extract from "cheap-art", an e-text by Olia lialina (teleportica.org) dated mon 19th Jan. 98. - available on-line from nettime. In her text she considers the emergent structures of the "net art [sic]" world
  7. < Extract from "Net Art is Not Art???", an e-text by Carey Young, on nettime Thurs 13 Mar 1997.
  8. < (dots per inch)The highest resolution workable on the internet because of downloading time, and screen resolution, inadequate in terms of high definition visual reproduction.
  9. < http://ww.adaweb.org
  10. < Images from adaweb artist biography, and from Holzer's "Please Change Beliefs" at http://www.adaweb.org
  11. < Quoted in Michael Auping, Jenny Holzer (New York: Universe, 1992), 73, from Rudolf Freiling, "Hot Spots, text in motion and the textscape of electronic media", in Clicking In, Hot Links to a Digital Culture, ed. Lynn Hershmann Leeson, Bay Press, Seattle 1996.
  12. < Extracted from "Utopian Promises, Net Realities, Promise #5, Democracy", Critical Art Ensemble, Berlin, 1995. Distributed on nettime: (http://www.desk.nl/nettime/)
  13. < "In the case of information gathering, the information is only as useful as the situation and the location of the physical body allows. For example, a gay man who lives in a place where homophobia reigns, or even worse, where homosexual practice is an illegal activity, will still be unable to openly act on his desires, regardless of the information he may gather on the net. He is still just as closeted in his everyday life practice, and is reduced to passive spectatorship in regard to the object of his desire, so long as he remains in a repressive locality." (extracted from "Utopian Promises, Net Realities, Promise #5, Democracy", Critical Art Ensemble, Berlin, 1995.)
  14. < Immediately recognisable as the "404 not found" default text which most servers will send to your computer if the document you are requesting from the server does not exist or has been withheld.
  15. < The "status bar" is the bottom edge of the browser window in both Navigator and Explorer. It tends to be used to give information on the contents of links, or simply display the file source or title of that link.
  16. < A frameset is a positional reference document which will open several frames ( in this case a top half and a bottom half) which may have many separate or interconnected web pages displayed in them.
  17. < This title refers to the title of a hoax virus, the news of which was spread as the virus itself claimed to - via e-mail. This alarmist spreading of anti hacker/phreaker, and virus merchant material, forms a subject matter in "Goodtimes" and Identifies jodi's project of artistic discovery and expression on the net very much alongside that of the hack/phreak community.
  18. < A Javascript (see note 3) programme which causes the page to scroll vertically down the screen as soon as it has loaded.
  19. < When creating the background to a web page, it is possible to specify not only a colour, but also an image to be tiled on the background
  20. < Rudolf Freiling, "Hot Spots, text in motion and the textscape of electronic media", in Clicking In, Hot Links to a Digital Culture, ed. Lynn Hershmann Leeson, Bay Press, Seattle 1996.p. 270
  21. < For example, references to the location on the server of image files which may not be available to save from the foreground of the document. Having been located, these can be downloaded and saved onto the user's hard disk. positional references might be
    - - - -
    , anything between these captions or "tags" would be centred on the page, but the browser will not display text contained within "<>" symbols.
  22. < Learning about and using telephone systems, but not legally.
  23. < Bulletin board servers, just as it sounds, a text based forum for debate. A bbs is where most people learn hacking, phreaking, etc.
  24. < Diagram taken from "Hackintosh #3", by the Weasel. Available at http://www.weasel.org
  25. < ASCII graphic from "Frankie's Fireside Phreak Primer"(c)1987 cDc (cult of the dead cow) communications by Franken Gibe. Available from http://www.weasel.org
  26. < A diagram of TST topology From "The fine art of Telephony", by Crimson Flash, Phrack 40, file 7. Available from http://ww.weasel.org (the graphic worked fine on Netscape, I screwed it up by saving it in Word)
  27. < Freiling, Ibid., p275.
  28. < "Hot", can be described broadly as high-definition information that requires little work from the viewer, such as print, which is self contained as a linguistic system of deferral. "Cool" is the opposite, a low-definition medium which requires the viewer to fill in the gaps- a multi sensory experience.
  29. < "Understanding Media, the Extensions of Man", Marshall Mcluhan, MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, London, England. 1964.
  30. < Available to download free from http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu
  31. < The word "Pixel" is actually an abbreviation of "picture element".
  32. < Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Illuminations Walter Benjamin, Schocken Books, NYC, 1955 p. 221
  33. < Ibid. p. 221
  34. < "Conscience of a Hacker", The Mentor 1986 Available at just about any Hack website including my favourite : www.weasel.org
  35. < Rosalind Krauss, in "The Originality of the Avant Guarde", October, no. 18, Cambridge, Mass. Fall 1981, Art in Theory, p. 1061
  36. < Ibid, Art in Theory, p. 1062

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