GEO GOO (Info Park) by JODI :: October 18 – November 9, 2008 :: Opening: October 17; 6:00 pm :: iMAL Center for Digital Cultures and Technology, 30 Quai des Charbonnages/Koolmijnenkaai 30, Brussels 1080.

JODI, the Belgian-Dutch duo pioneer of Net Art, explores the relations between the world as we build it through Internet and the one based on our past mental and physical maps. Services such as GoogleMaps have changed our worldview radically by making the Globe accessible as a commercial multi-user surface. Mapping its geometrical constructs to reality and vice versa, overlaying its online figures as jogging paths, The ‘Parc Royal’ of Brussels (Warande Park) becomes an INFO Park revealing symbols and mysteries of the Belgian capital and capital of Europe, amplifying or deconstructing them through an intricate web of data and associations.

OPENING WEEK-END OF BRUSSELS BIENNIAL: GEOGOO participates to the associated programme of the 1st Brussels Biennial. Don’t miss the opening party on October 18th by CatClub, South Station.

Read Ed Halter’s review World of Goo:

“Designed in the 18th century, the Parc de Bruxelles, located in the center of Brussels, allegedly contains a hidden symbol in its layout, visible only from the air: a Masonic compass, signified by a circle atop a triangle. For GEO GOO (Info Park), currently on view at iMAL with elements online, Internet art trailblazers 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. GEO GOO harkens back to a 2007 work by JODI, GEO GEO, in which they traced words and whole sentences onto the maps of various cities (chosen for having lent their names to fonts). Both projects continue the Dutch-Belgian duo’s intricate and obsessive drive to derange the Internet from inside out, taking advantage of innate quirks and loopholes in available systems in the service of a punked-out creative jujitsu.” – Ed Halter, Rhizome.org.

Image: JODI, GEO GOO (Info Park), 2008
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