Prix net art: JODI e Kari Altman

Prix Net Art is a prize launched by the Rhizome.org platform, Tsinghua Art & Science Lab (TASML) and the Center for Art and Technology (CAT) to award those artists active in the field of net.art who have excelled over the years for their visionary work. At the moment, the prize will be distributed on a three-year basis. The duo Jodi.org has won the $10,000 Prix Net Art award for this first edition while Kari Altmann is the recipient of the $5,000 Award Distinction.

JODI is a pseudonym for Dutch artist Joan Heemskerk (b.1968) and Belgium’s Dirk Paesmans (b.1965), members of an inner circle of net artists who have been working as pioneers of this genre of creative experimentation since the early 1990s. Their work is based upon a philosophical type of aesthetic premise that, when put into practice, is manifested in the overturning of conventional system programming like the ones used for video games, videos, apps or browsers and subvert the modes of data access. The information extracted is converted into an electronic image, aesthetic sublimation. Its contemplation is often accompanied by a certain apprehension on the part of spectators – especially in their earlier works – once they learn that the duo loves getting into other people’s computers (We love your Computer). Their work was initially created exclusively on line to later evolve into a variety of forms such as software and sites, installations, performances and exhibitions.

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JODI was awarded by the jury for being «key figures in this generation, often disrupting the web—its HTML and other code—in order to make its processes and effects more transparent. Throughout their careers, they have remained committed to the internet, in its changing forms over the years, as a contested and vital site for artistic practice.»

Kari Altman (b.1983) is a young artist who works with different platforms and formats. She works with online ecosystems such as memes, brands, trends and algorithms, creating micro-genres of content that develop by pushing visual logic to extremes and repurpose them within her circuits so that they can take on new meaning. Her work is particularly influential in the post-internet dimension. Her works have been recently commissioned by prestigious international institutions such as the New Museum in New York (Soft Mobility Abstract), London’s Serpentine Gallery (Extinct Marathon) and for the Art Post Internet project for the Ullens Center in Beijing.

Kari Altmann is the recipient of the Award Distinction in recognition of «her vision of future directions and possibilities for internet art. Her practice is especially important in regards to the changing role of the artist in a highly networked culture. Referring to her practice as ‘based in the cloud,’ she works as an artist embedded within internet culture, forming collaborations and sharing images across Tumblr, Instagram, and other social media platforms and apps. Altmann works fluidly across the web and the gallery space, considering each artistic medium as another kind of file format, and each artwork as a node in an evolving, collaborative, and networked system in which she is also a node.»

Aside from the acknowledgment of an artistic genre like the one that has taken the form of net.art, Prix Net Art awards works of art for the purpose of helping to shed light upon one of the developmental paths of experimental art. This movement has found a means of creation and diffusion on the Internet: from the initial objective with which the artists approached the web (JODI is one of this movement’s pioneers) to one of the possible future evolutions of what has been defined as post-internet art. Kari Altman has brought this to life as part of a generation that is totally immersed in the technological and media environment. In conclusion of the jury’s opening statement, we quote: «The internet is more than just a canvas, medium or publishing platform for art. The internet is a system that links human and machine intelligence to produce politics, economics, culture, and subjectivities. To make «internet art» is to intervene in, or participate mindfully in, these processes».