Internet provocateurs JODI pioneered Web art in the mid-1990s. Based in The Netherlands, JODI (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans) were among the first artists to investigate and subvert conventions of the Internet, computer programs, and video and computer games. Radically disrupting the very language of these systems, including interfaces, commands, errors and code, JODI stages extreme digital interventions that destabilize the relationship between computer technology and its users.
JODI (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans) was formed in 1994. Joan Heemskerk was born in 1968 in Kaatsheue, The Netherlands. Dirk Paesmans was born in 1965 in Brussels, Belgium. Heemskerk and Paesman both attended Silicon Valley's electronic arts laboratory CADRE at San Jose State University in California; Paesmans also studied with Nam June Paik at the Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf. JODI's works are typically seen online. Their recent solo exhibitions include INSTALL.EXE at Eyebeam, New York, which toured to [plug-in], Basel, and BuroFriedrich, Berlin; and Computing 101B at FACT Centre, Liverpool, England. Their works have also been exhibited at Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow; Kunstverein Bonn; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, Germany, and Documenta X, Kassel, Germany, among others.
Heemskerk and Paesmans live and work in The Netherlands.