101010zzz is the first solo exhibition by Belgian / Dutch artist duo JODI, Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans, in Hong Kong/China. Building upon the most digital day ever in our digital age – 10/10/10, the exhibition gives an overview of JODI’s recent obsession in undermining the digital culture into a unique free association space. Its centerpiece – 10/10/10 Digital Day is a participatory project that invites Internet users to submit 10/10/10
date stamps. By collecting digital moments and patterns on a variety of gadgets, machines and timers, the theme of the exhibition is set on participation for every online and offline users to celebrate the joy and the fear with technology. The exhibition also features four other remarkable projects to exemplify JODI’s anecdotes on etiquette, conventions and the
uncanny use of computers.

Since the early days of the Internet, JODI has been inspiring and enthusing the Net communities with their unique strain of Net art. From computer experiments on the Internet to their three-dimensional video installations and game modifications, JODI is renowned for their creative misuse of computers and technologies.

As the web grows, net.art or Internet art means not only about computers, it also becomes a new way for human beings to build relationships. In the midst of a widespread web culture, Jodi exemplifies our practice on the Internet and expands the code of our ‘virtual’ life. If Web 2.0 and 3.0 is saying that the machine is us, this exhibition is a bold illustration of saying “art is us in the digital age” – from YouTube videos to Google Maps; old model cell phones to the simple date on your laptop’s calendar, we are creating a digital culture and showcasing ourselves in it. Through simple interventions, these works presented something we could all participate at our home and put everything of 101010 we found interesting together.

Workshop: ‘My () Not Seen on Google’
There will also be a workshop entitled ‘My () Not Seen on Google’ for the general population
to learn how to modify/hack the Google Streetview.app to introduce their perspective
to the Internet. “On Internet we touch screen and fly through cities with Googlemaps
and Streetview. Where do your stories live? Can you change life in Street Digital? What moves inside your head? We can modify the Google Streetview.app together so we
can introduce your perspective.(Not Reality!)” – Jodi

Exhibiting Artwork Details
10/10/10 Digital Day is an open call project for participants worldwide. Everyone can
send their images related to the date 10/10/10 to a website where the growing
collection is displayed. The Date is presented as a unique, once-in-a-lifetime moment
in our digital existence, and even if it is optimistically promoted it relates to our fear of strong number dates, as previous historic apocalypse warnings 666, 1984, Millennium Bug. The dramatic promise of ‘special moment’ is aggravated because computers work as clocks worldwide, datestamping everything we do. Numbering systems have different cultural backgrounds and the western numeric is not the only one. For the project starting out of Hong Kong, Jodi will pay special attention to these historic differences and how computer systems are perceived in different cultural backgrounds. This work deals with the forthcoming Y1C problem, the biggest hypothetical threat to our computer systems since Y2K. It is a computer glitch analogous to the millennium bug yet unique to Taiwan and North Korea since their official calendars begins with the founding year of a nation (Republic of China) and the birthday of the founding father (Kim Il-Sung) respectively.

Wreckerz 2010
Duration: 95 minutes
A raw documentary video about the emotive regeneration of digital toy equipment by Generation Z.

Folksomy
Folksomy, a special word derived from Folksonomy, is a study in how online systems (dis)function. It draws countless ‘folk’ images and amateur videos from YouTube to explore the strange love/hate relationship that relates users with new technologies. The site of Folksomy has no manual, users can click on one of the three series of four letters: FLKY, YTSN and YTCT, in the upper left corner of the screen to navigate through the infernal videojukebox.

“FLKY” pick in the databases of images and generate unusual collages from keywords. For example, “nerd_girl_geek_glasses” offers a selection of girl geeks with glasses; “apple_tattoo” shows tattoos of the logo of Apple, at the same time engraved apples. Jodi plays with the concept of “folksonomy” as the indexing of documents on the Internet made by non-specialists.

“YTSN” is showcasing the neurotic relationship with technology, offering a mix of songs in video format that hundreds of anonymous composers have written to celebrate (or boo) the machine: an ode to theNintendo NES console, the Wii, html code, or Web. The site is full of bathroom singers who have the hope of releasing a record. Jodi fulfills the wishes of some of them; pressing vinyl of their performance, then repost the video of a platinum disc playing on YouTube.

The letters “YTCT” lead to a screen composed of four videos that are renewed continuously showing the boundless imagination of users when it comes to killing their favorite playthings. As Joan Heemskerk once said, “These four screens is the collection of people doing strange things with hardware. My favorite ones are the people who do creative things with them.”

Thumbing YouTube
Thumbing YouTube is a YouTube intervention. The option to video comment on a YouTube video is used by JODI as a tool for performance. By holding up the thumb very close to the webcam for a 2-3 second moment the video-site monopoly gets infiltrated by an endless series of useless ‘pokes’. The performance itself is split into thousands short clips on random YouTube videos. The blurred and flesh colored video bits evoke again harsh reactions from the actual audience on YouTube.

The Dadaist nature of these actions creates a flux of information not easily understandable or analyzable by common criteria. The user has to deal with something unexpected and new behaviors are stimulated.

‘We collect all the 3-second fragments and compile them into a playlist, which then forms a new movie. What we find interesting is that it collects the statistics of YouTube. Hour by hour, we watch what you are displaying, what you are doing. That would be part of the work. It would be an abstract hitchhiking through YouTube.’ — JODI

GeoGoo
GeoGoo is an interpretation of data-visualization software.

For centuries, geometry has been overloaded with symbols, starting from pure mathematical objectsto esoteric and mystic signs, hiding in complex figures meanings to be revealed to the gurus, the persons in the know or the psychedelic explorers. Geometrical shapes and lines were drawn on the territories, the cities, the architectures and the monuments or the crop fields. JODI is connecting the long tradition of tracing geometry on the ground with the new virtual geometries one can draw on the surface of the Earth as proposed by online tools such as Google Maps and Google Earth. Of course, the artist duo draws in a pure JODI style: hectic and free traces resulting from extreme coding and hacking.

GeoGoo references the Parc de Bruxelles which was designed in the 18th century. Located in thecenter of Brussels, the Parc de Bruxelles allegedly contains a hidden symbol in its layout, visibleonly from the air: a Masonic compass, signified by a circle atop a triangle.

JODI have created a series of their own arcane symbols by employing 21st century geographic technology, leveraging Google Maps’ innate functions in the service of graphic expression. Manipulating a variety of default icons, some of JODI’s animations use maps of the Parc de Bruxelles itself: one places a crowd of tiny green explorers on the Parc, hiking the Masonic compass; another iteration generates new symbols on the Parc’s layout each time it loads — including euros, yen, houses, touristy cameras and red crosses — obliquely evoking semi-random political significance when layered atop the center of the EU. Other examples utilize global maps, pushing the limits of Google’s service to create jittering compositions, while some avoid the land altogether to enable exercises in a more pure abstraction.

Jodi draws upon our traditional conception of human’s relations to technologies, subverting them with remarkable brand of information aesthetics and rebellious humor. 101010zzz is a unique and valuable event to introduce Jodi and Net art to a broader audience in Hong Kong. As we have been given more tools, platforms and gadgets for self-expression than ever before, this exhibition demonstrates what opportunities for creative and artistic intervention most of us have been sadly missing out on.

Opening Reception (and artist talk)
Date & Time: 10/10/10 (Sun), 3pm-5pm @ Videotage

Opening Performance
During the opening, Jodi will bring you a VJ performance
– Live VideoMIX of Nerdcore Geek Clips for 101 minutes

Exhibition
Date: 11/10/10 – 11/11/10 (Daily except public holidays)
Time: 12pm-7pm
Venue: Videotage
Address: Unit 13, Cattle Depot Artist Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Road, To Kwa Wan, Kln.