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The question of how to take over the machine, along with an interest in viruses and the disturbances and dysfunctions they cause in computer systems, have been constant elements in Jodi’s work. This artistic duo works tirelessly on the growth of their website, which so far has a total of 350 pages. Constantly updated, with pages piled one on top of another and recent additions stuck right over older ones, their site gets bigger and bigger, like a machine completely out of control. When the users access jodi.org, they inevitably end up wondering whether their own computer has been infected by some virus. The windows on the screen start to shift, text begins blinking all over the place, and characters start writhing on the screen, which is filled with ever-changing colors. Everything suddenly seems unstable and infected. But there is nothing of the sort. Heemskerk and Paesman’s work is elaborate programming, a formal game played on the computer world. On their website, they manage the feat of visually assembling a great number of electronic elements: texts in ASCII, windows, cursors, and images produced by the host computer. All of this creates an environment unto itself, one which integrates the ever-more familiar aesthetic of the computer screen. In general, the screen displays the results of the operations executed by the machine, to which the user generally has little access. It can just as easily display things in internal mode as in external (the Web). It is often difficult to determine where an image or a piece of data comes from or how it was generated. Heemskerk and Paesmans' page is the result of a local interpretation on the user’s computer of data originating on a server situated elsewhere. This confusion between local and remote often recurs on the Internet. Nowhere else does one so often have the feeling of being simultaneously both here and elsewhere, and from one place having access to such an infinite number of other places. Simon Lamunière |