Nam June Paik was a Korean-American artist and an emblematic figure for contemporary arts. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. Video art is an art form which relies on moving pictures in a visual and audio medium. Nam June Paik is hailed as the father of video art and is credited with the first use of the term "electronic superhighway" in the 1970s.
He was born in Seoul in 1932, the youngest of five siblings. In 1950, Paik and his family had to flee from their home in Korea, during the Korean War. His family first fled to Hong Kong, but later moved to Japan. Six years later he graduated from the University of Tokyo.
In the University of Tokyo, he wrote a thesis on the composer Arnold Schoenberg (a Jewish Austrian composer, music theorist, and painter). While studying in Germany, Paik met Karlheinz Stockhausen (German composer) and John Cage (American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher, and artist) and the conceptual artists George Maciunas, Joseph Beuys and Wolf Vostell (German painter and sculptor). He was a member of Fluxus (The Neo-Dada art movement). Fluxus is an international and interdisciplinary group of artists, composers, designers and poets that took shape the 1960s and 1970s.
Paik moved to New York in 1964, where he came into contact with the downtown art scene. In 1965, he began collaborating with cellist Charlotte Moorman, who would wear and perform Paik’s TV sculptures for many years; he also had a one-man show at the 57th Street Galeria Bonino, in which he exhibited modified or “prepared” television sets that upset the traditional TV-watching experience. One example is Magnet TV, in which an industrial magnet is placed on top of the TV set, distorting the broadcast image into abstract patterns of light. According to an oft-cited story, on October 4th of that same year, Paik purchased the first commercially-available portable video system in America, the Sony Portapak, and immediately used it to record the arrival of Pope Paul VI at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Later that night, Paik showed the tape at the Café au Go Go in Greenwich Village, ushering in a new mode of video art based not on the subversion or distortion of television broadcasts, but on the possibilities of videotape. The evolution of these tendencies into a new movement was announced by a 1969 group show, “TV as a Creative Medium.” Held at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York, the show included one of Paik's interactive TVs, and also premiered another one of his collaborations with Moorman.
In 1965, Sony introduced the Portapak, though it is said that Paik had a similar one before Sony released theirs. With this, Paik could both move and record things, for it was the first portable video and audio recorder. From there, Paik became an international celebrity, known for his creative and entertaining works.
In the same year in 1965, Magnet TV was developed relatively late by Paik. By then he had already engaged in numerous complex operations on the inner-workings of television sets, but was yet to consider how magnets applied from outside were also well-suited to altering the electromagnetic flow of electrons. At first, Paik worked with only a horseshoe-shaped electromagnet and a degasser, used by technicians to deactivate the television screen’s state of being charged. The magnet’s force of attraction hindered the cathode rays from filling the screen’s rectangular surface. This pushed the field of horizontal lines upward thus creating baffling forms within the magnet’s gravitational field. If the magnet maintained its position, the picture remained stable apart from minimal changes caused by fluctuations in the flow of electricity. Moving the magnet caused endless variations on the forms.
TV Buddha is one of Paik’s most well-known pieces, perhaps due to the fact that the Buddha Statue can ichnographically be easily identified and objected. Yet, Paik does something that defies the East v. West symbolism and moves towards the surface. The Buddha statue is presented in a quiet meditation mudra; however, the video camera is simultaneously recording the statue and displaying the image on the television screen. In this closed-circuit loop, the Buddha is sitting opposite his own projected image, disallowing his transcendence from his own physicality. Instead, he is caught in his own reflection, doomed to stay on the surface of reality.
In 1974, Nam June Paik submitted a report to the Art Program of the Rockefeller Foundation, one of the first organizations to support artists working with new media, including television and video. Entitled “Media Planning for the Post-Industrial Society - The 21st Century is now only 26 years away,” the report argued that media technologies would become increasingly prevalent in American society, and should be used to address pressing social problems, such as racial segregation, the modernization of the economy, and environmental pollution. Presciently, Paik’s report forecasted the emergence of what he called a “broadband communication network” or “electronic super highway” comprising not only television and video but also “audio cassettes, telex, data pooling, continental satellites, micro-fiches, private microwaves and eventually, fiber optics on laser frequencies.” By the 1990s, Paik’s concept of an information “superhighway” had become associated with a new “world wide web” of electronic communication then emerging just as he had predicted. About “Electronic Superhighway”. Paik said, "The building of new electronic super highways will become an even huger enterprise. Assuming we connect New York with Los Angeles by means of an electronic telecommunication network that operates in strong transmission ranges, as well as with continental satellites, waveguides, bundled coaxial cable, and later also via laser beam fiber optics: the expenditure would be about the same as for a Moon landing, except that the benefits in term of by-products would be greater."
At the age of 73, this avant-garde composer, performer, and artist widely considered the inventor of video art, died January 29, 2006 at his winter home in Miami Beach, Florida, United States.
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| Nam June Paik |
He was born in Seoul in 1932, the youngest of five siblings. In 1950, Paik and his family had to flee from their home in Korea, during the Korean War. His family first fled to Hong Kong, but later moved to Japan. Six years later he graduated from the University of Tokyo.
In the University of Tokyo, he wrote a thesis on the composer Arnold Schoenberg (a Jewish Austrian composer, music theorist, and painter). While studying in Germany, Paik met Karlheinz Stockhausen (German composer) and John Cage (American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher, and artist) and the conceptual artists George Maciunas, Joseph Beuys and Wolf Vostell (German painter and sculptor). He was a member of Fluxus (The Neo-Dada art movement). Fluxus is an international and interdisciplinary group of artists, composers, designers and poets that took shape the 1960s and 1970s.
Paik moved to New York in 1964, where he came into contact with the downtown art scene. In 1965, he began collaborating with cellist Charlotte Moorman, who would wear and perform Paik’s TV sculptures for many years; he also had a one-man show at the 57th Street Galeria Bonino, in which he exhibited modified or “prepared” television sets that upset the traditional TV-watching experience. One example is Magnet TV, in which an industrial magnet is placed on top of the TV set, distorting the broadcast image into abstract patterns of light. According to an oft-cited story, on October 4th of that same year, Paik purchased the first commercially-available portable video system in America, the Sony Portapak, and immediately used it to record the arrival of Pope Paul VI at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Later that night, Paik showed the tape at the Café au Go Go in Greenwich Village, ushering in a new mode of video art based not on the subversion or distortion of television broadcasts, but on the possibilities of videotape. The evolution of these tendencies into a new movement was announced by a 1969 group show, “TV as a Creative Medium.” Held at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York, the show included one of Paik's interactive TVs, and also premiered another one of his collaborations with Moorman.
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| Artwork by Nam June Paik |
In the same year in 1965, Magnet TV was developed relatively late by Paik. By then he had already engaged in numerous complex operations on the inner-workings of television sets, but was yet to consider how magnets applied from outside were also well-suited to altering the electromagnetic flow of electrons. At first, Paik worked with only a horseshoe-shaped electromagnet and a degasser, used by technicians to deactivate the television screen’s state of being charged. The magnet’s force of attraction hindered the cathode rays from filling the screen’s rectangular surface. This pushed the field of horizontal lines upward thus creating baffling forms within the magnet’s gravitational field. If the magnet maintained its position, the picture remained stable apart from minimal changes caused by fluctuations in the flow of electricity. Moving the magnet caused endless variations on the forms.
TV Buddha is one of Paik’s most well-known pieces, perhaps due to the fact that the Buddha Statue can ichnographically be easily identified and objected. Yet, Paik does something that defies the East v. West symbolism and moves towards the surface. The Buddha statue is presented in a quiet meditation mudra; however, the video camera is simultaneously recording the statue and displaying the image on the television screen. In this closed-circuit loop, the Buddha is sitting opposite his own projected image, disallowing his transcendence from his own physicality. Instead, he is caught in his own reflection, doomed to stay on the surface of reality.
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| Nam June Paik - Electronic Superhighway |
At the age of 73, this avant-garde composer, performer, and artist widely considered the inventor of video art, died January 29, 2006 at his winter home in Miami Beach, Florida, United States.
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