Dirk Paesmans
Residency Grant at the Interaction Lab
May – July 2017
Dirk Paesmans, Brussels 1965
Residency Grant at the Interaction Lab
Period of residence:
May – July 2017
Dirk Paesmans is a member of the JODI collective with Joan Heemskerk. Their background is in photography and video art; since the mid-1990s they started to create original artworks for the World Wide Web. A few years later, they also turned to software art and artistic computer game modification. In 1999 they began the practice of modifying old video games such as Wolfenstein 3 to create art mods like SOD.Their efforts were celebrated in the 1999 Webby Awards where they took top prize in the category of “net art”. Jodi used their 5-word acceptance speech (a Webby Award tradition) to criticize the event with the words “Ugly commercial sons of bitches.” Further video game modifications soon followed for Quake, Jet Set Willy, and the latest, Max Payne 2 (2006) to create a new set of art games. Jodi organized exhibitions (Webcrash) and participated in international group shows with performances and installations. The Net.art that Jodi creates is opposed to post-internet art, Net.artists develop their work in the context of Online media and make it available on the internet without institutional constraints. Recently JODI published performative Apps(ZYX) and exhibition projects in collaboration with other artists.
