Jodi
«walkmonster_start ()»

On October 22, 2001, Jodi put an extensive text onto the international e-mail list Nettime. The text seemed to be a critical comment on contemporary political crises and wars and the way they were discussed on cultural platforms on the Web. But above all, the text turned out to be an impressive poetic work. The military order of linguistic and typographical features gave the text the appearance of an obsessively encoded inventory or a strategic diagram or plan. Readers who know both English and programming languages were also able to see that the poem is a functional source code in the programming language C. Indeed, the text is one part of a source code of Jodi's untitled game. This code is based on the source code of the commercial computer game Quake. By holding back the information about its origin and function, Jodi's e-mail made visible the esthetical and political subtexts of seemingly neutral sequences of technical commands.

(Source: Florian Cramer, «Discordia Concors: www.jodi.org,» in: [plugin] / Tilman Baumgärtel / BüroFriedrich (eds.), Install.exe–Jodi, Basel, 2002)