Nam June Paik: Electronic Expression (analytical essay)

Nam June Paik
Electronic Expression
Garrett Landry

Nam June Paik was considered one of the first pioneers in video art. The Korean-born American artist addressed the increasing amount of new electronic media technologies throughout the late 20^th century through the use of sculpture, performance, and music. His philosophies, such as open distribution and free use of technology, inspired future “New Media” and digital artists around the world.  He also explored the roles the human element played in our evolving technologies. Nam June Paik’s incredible body of work spans over forty years and  showcases his experimentation with newly developing innovative technologies such as television, circuitry, sound, and electronics.

Paik was born in Seoul, Korea during the Japanese occupation on July 20, 1932.  He had four older brothers and his father owned a textile manufacturing firm. During the Korean War, Nam June Paik and his family were forced to flee to Hong Kong, and later moved to Japan. He was trained as a classical pianist and eventually moved to Germany where he studied music history at Munich University. It was during this time when Paik met conceptual artists such as Wolf Vostell and Joseph Bueys, as well as composers  Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage.  Shortly thereafter, Paik became inspired to work in the field of electronic art. (“Nam June Paik”). Nam June Paik joined Fluxus, a group based on John Cages theories during the Neo Dada art movement, in 1963.  Fluxus (which is derived from a Latin word meaning “to flow”) is an international network of artists, designers, and composers who developed and compiled different innovative artistic disciplines.  Fluxus focused on experimental compositions and was based on anti-commercialism principles. Fluxus art centered around the idea of self-creativity and new media exploration, which became an imperative influence on Paik’s work (“Fluxus”).

It was through Fluxus that Paik discovered various methodologies involving the interpretation and creation of collage, sound art, sculpture, concrete poetry, and video.  He often created artworks involving a combination of television sculptures and music. In 1963, Paik participated in “Fluxus. Internationale Festspiele neuester Musik” in Galerie Parnass, Wuppertal where he revealed his “Exposition of Musik / Electronic Television” exhibition. This was a groundbreaking first for Paik, as this was considered to be the first work ever to include the use of monitors. He continued to experiment with various physical distortions of the television screen, procured the first available portable video recorder, and explored multi-monitor and channel installations.   Nam June Paik was one of the first artists to successfully express his deep insights through the use of electronic technology.  He revealed that moving images were indeed a key central idea in our new rapidly expanding visual culture and that the way images were created, controlled, manipulated, and presented played an important role in communication. Paik often created robots and moving sculptures out of television sets and radio parts. He was not afraid to explore spirituality and religion within a technological context. In 1974, he created “TV Buddha”, a sculpture piece where a statue of Buddha is seated in front of a television displaying a video of itself.  In 1986, Paik created “Butterfly”, a two minute video using composed music in combination with computer imaging and animation, which demonstrated his curiosity of digital artwork forms (“PAIK, NAM”).
Nam June Paik utilized television as an artistic instrument and revealed to us alternative forms of expression by using surrounding technologies that influence our lives on a daily basis. He has proven to be an inspiration to present and future “New Media” and digital artists. Paik envisioned video and electronic art as what he described, an “electronic superhighway”; accessible and free to everyone.  His anti-commercialism approach to new media technology and art has become a popular theme in regards to digital artists today. This idea of “distributed creativity” involves creative resources which allow people to share and generate artistic works.  Digital artists such as Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Pareno created such works as No Ghost, Anywhere Out of the World, which allowed other artists to take their creations and produce and distribute new works freely. This notion of sharing unrestricted information is prevalent in today’s “hacker” ideals. McKenzie Wark, creator of the Hacker’s Manifesto in 2006, describes hackers as distributers and producers of information, and that owners of this information, the vectoralists, inhibit the advancement of society by restricting its general access to the public (Epidemiology, 23). Paik’s “free sharing” mentality can also be seen in the idea of Creative Commons licensing, which enables legal distributive creativity.  Some of Nam June Paik’s later works broke away from some of the more popular Fluxus ideologies as he began to address issues of self identity, introspective exploration, and human integration into technology. Many examples of his work contain videos with moving images of himself and other people. Other innovative artworks Paik created, such as TV Cello, involve actual people (musicians) interacting with the sculptures themselves. The involvement of the “human” element within the world of digital art and technology is a common theme in New Media art. Artists such as Stelarc and Kenneth Feingold create “self-portrait” works incorporating themselves into video and electronics. Eduardo Kac is a popular artist known for his work in telerobotics and bio art. Like Paik, Kac has created robots such as Ornitorrincwhich, which presents principles of human/technological interaction within the social order. Nam June Paik’s acknowledgment that the influence of technology on identity shares some similarities with the ideology of Donna Harraway’s “cyberfeminism”, which connects the roles that technology relates to women in today’s culture and how it affects notions of data relations and “feminization” of certain aspects within society (SubRosa). Nam June Paik’s videos demonstrate experimentation with form, color, and image. He often used minimalist algorithmic animations and recursive ray tracing formulas to produce interesting and evolving video compositions. In a sense, his techniques for “programming” and producing video relates to the way present digital artists code algorithms in programs in their work, which allow for new interesting combinations and ever changing animations.  Paik was also known for creating international satellite installations such as Good Morning Mr. Orwell (1984), which linked a live satellite video feed performance between two stations in Paris and New York.  This idea of associating technology, more importantly computers, with telecommunication is known as telematics.  Many New Media artists like Ken Goldberg and Musaki Fujihata have integrated telematics and telecommunication technology, by means of using the internet as a main theme within their works (“Good Morning Mr. Orwell).

Nam June Paik devoted his life’s work to the creation of a revolutionary new media culture by exploring new tools and technology newly available to the public.  This “avant-garde” artist paved the way for innovative new concepts in video and electronic art, as well as the creation of a foundation for future artists interested in addressing issues concerning New Media art. It is widely believed that Paik may have been the author of the phrase “Information Superhighway“, which he used in a Rockefeller Foundation paper in 1974. Even after his death from complications of a stroke on January 9, 2006, his work still remains tremendously relevant and perhaps unparalleled today. Paik’s incredible body of work into the new frontier of digital arts was presented to the world with a final retrospective of his works, which was held in 2000 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, integrating the unique space of the museum into the exhibition itself. Fittingly, this coincided with a downtown gallery showing of video artworks by his wife Shigeko Kubota, mainly dealing with his recovery from the stroke (“Nam June Paik”). I close with two of my favorite Nam June Paik’s quotes:  “Skin has become inadequate in interfacing with reality. Technology has become the body’s new membrane of existence.”  “The future is NOW.”

Works Cited:

“Nam June Paik.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 14 Apr. 2010.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nam_June_Paik>.

“Fluxus.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 16 Apr. 2010.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus>.

“PAIK, NAM JUNE.” The Museum of Broadcast Communications. Web. 20 Apr. 2010.
<http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=paiknamjun>.

Nam June Paik Studios. Web. 20 Apr. 2010. <http://www.paikstudios.com/>.

Epidemiology, 23. In. “A Hacker Manifesto by McKenzie Wark.” NeMe.
Web. 23 Apr. 2010. <http://www.neme.org/main/291/hacker-manifesto>.

“Good Morning, Mr. Orwell.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 23 Apr. 2010.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Morning,_Mr._Orwell>.

Paik, Nam June, Toni Stooss, and Thomas Kellein. Nam June Paik: Video Time, Video Space.
New York: H.N. Abrams, 1993. Print.

Kellein, Thomas, and Jon Hendricks. Fluxus. London: Thames and Hudson, 1995.
Print.

SubRosa. Web. 24 Apr. 2010. <http://www.cyberfeminism.net/publications/index.html>.

“Satellite Art: An Interview with Nam June Paik.”  KAC. Web. 24 Apr. 2010.
<http://www.ekac.org/paik.interview.html>.

PDF Article of Name June Paik

http://www.vasulka.org/Kitchen/PDF_Eigenwelt/pdf/126-129.pdf

“Good Morning Mr. Orwell”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Morning,_Mr._Orwell

“Good Morning, Mr. Orwell” was the first international satellite “installation” by Nam June Paik, a South Korean-born American artist often credited with inventing video art. It occurred on New Year’s Day, 1984.

The event, which Paik saw as a rebuttal to George Orwell‘s dystopian vision of 1984, linked WNET TV in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris live via satellite, as well as hooking up with broadcasters in Germany and South Korea. It aired nationwide in the US on public television, and reached an audience of over 25 million viewers worldwide.

George Plimpton hosted the show, which combined live and taped segments with TV graphics designed by Paik. John Cage, in New York, produced music by stroking the needles of dried cactus plants with a feather,^[1] accompanied by video images from Paris. Charlotte Moorman recreated Paik’s TV Cello. Laurie Anderson and Peter Gabriel performed a new composition, “Excellent Birds,” also known as “This Is the Picture (Excellent Birds).” The broadcast also featured the television premiere of the video Act III, with music by Philip Glass.^[2] The Thompson Twins performed their song “Hold Me Now.”^[3] Oingo Boingo played its song “Wake Up (It’s 1984)” to an audience that presumably had recently woken up on the first day of 1984. Others contributing to the project included poets Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, choreographer Merce Cunningham, and artist Joseph Beuys.

The program was conceived and coordinated by Nam June Paik. Executive Producer: Carol Brandenburg. Assisted by Debbie Liebling, Anne Garefino, Mark Malamud, and others.

Technical problems plagued the show from the beginning. Different versions of the show were seen in the U.S. and France because the satellite connection between the two countries kept cutting out, leaving each side to improvise to fill the gaps. At one point, a performer in New York attempted a “space yodel”; the host explained that his voice would be bounced back and forth over the satellite link to produce an echo, but no echoes were actually heard.^[4] Paik said that the technical problems only enhanced the “live” mood.^[5]

An edited 30-minute version of “Good Morning, Mr. Orwell” has appeared in a number of exhibitions, including In Memoriam: Nam June Paik at the Museum of Modern Art.^[6] A New York Times art critic described this work: “Figures turn into bold outlines or silhouettes, surrounded by shifting geometric shapes. Edges become soft, then hard. Images overlap. Some take on new configurations. Seven screens repeat the same pictures simultaneously. Although the viewer doesn’t know what to expect, the celebrities are real, the film lends credibility and therefore all seems plausible.”^[3]

Paik followed up the piece in 1986 with “Bye Bye Kipling”, a satellite installation linking New York, Seoul, and Tokyo. The title alluded to a famous quotation by Rudyard Kipling: “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.”^[7]

http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=paiknamjun

Nam June Paik

U.S. Video Artist

Nam June Paik–composer, performer, and video artist–played a pivotal role in introducing artists and audiences to the possibilities of using video for artistic expression. His works explore the ways in which performance, music, video images, and the sculptural form of objects can be used in various combinations to question our accepted notions of the nature of television.

Growing up in Korea, Nam June Paik studied piano and composition. When his family moved, first to Hong Kong and then to Japan, he continued his studies in music while completing a degree in aesthetics at the University of Tokyo. After graduating, Paik went to Germany to pursue graduate work in philosophy. There he became part of a group of Fluxus artists who were challenging established notions of what constituted art. Their work often found expression in performances and happenings that incorporated random events and found objects.

In 1959 Paik performed his composition Hommage a John Cage. This performance combined a pre-recorded collage of music and sounds with “on stage” sounds created by people, a live hen, a motorcycle, and various objects. Random events marked this and other Paik compositions. Instruments were often altered or even destroyed during the performance. Most performances were as much a visual as a musical experience.

As broadcast television programming invaded the culture, Paik began to experiment with ways to alter the video image. In 1963 he included his first video sculptures in an exhibition, Exposition of Music–Electronic Television. Twelve television sets were scattered throughout the exhibit space. The electronic components of these sets were modified to create unexpected effects in the images being received. Other video sculptures followed. Distorted TV used manipulation of the sync pulse to alter the image. Magnet TV used a large magnet which could be moved on the outside of the television set to change the image and create abstract patterns of light. Paik began to incorporate television sets into a series of robots. The early robots were constructed largely of bits and pieces of wire and metal; later ones were built from vintage radio and television sets refitted with updated electronic components.

Some of Paik’s video installations involve a single monitor, others use a series of monitors. In TV Buddha a statue of Buddha sits facing its own image on a closed-circuit television screen. For TV Clock twenty-four monitors are lined up. The image on each is compressed into a single line with the lines on succeeding monitors rotated to suggest the hands of a clock representing each hour of the day. In Positive Egg the video camera is aimed at a white egg on a black cloth. In a series of larger and larger monitors, the image is magnified until the actual egg becomes an abstract shape on the screen.

In 1964 Paik moved to New York City and began a collaboration with classical cellist Charlotte Moorman to produce works combining video with performance. In TV Bra for Living Sculpture small video monitors became part of the cellist’s costume. With TV Cello television sets were stacked to suggest the shape of the cello. As Moorman drew the bow across the television sets, images of her playing, video collages of other cellists, and live images of the performance area combined.

When the first consumer-grade portable video cameras and recorders went on sale in New York in 1965, Paik purchased one. Held up in a traffic jam created by Pope Paul VI’s motorcade, Paik recorded the parade and later that evening showed it to friends at Cafe a Go-Go. With this development in technology it was possible for the artist to create personal and experimental video programs.

Paik was invited to participate in several experimental workshops including one at WGBH in Boston and another at WNET in New York City. The Medium is the Medium, his first work broadcast by WGBH, was a video collage that raised questions about who is in control of the viewing experience. At one point in a voice-over Paik instructed the viewers to follow his directions, to close or open their eyes, and finally to turn off the set. At WGBH Paik and electronics engineer Shuya Abe built the first model of Paik’s video synthesizer which produced non-representational images. Paik used the synthesizer to accompany a rock-and-roll soundtrack in Video Commune and to illustrate Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto. At WNET Paik completed a series of short segments, The Selling of New York, which juxtaposed the marketing of New York and the reality of life in the city. Global Groove, produced with John Godfrey, opened with an explanation that it was a “glimpse of a video landscape of tomorrow when you will be able to switch to any TV station on the earth and TV guides will be as fat as the Manhattan telephone book.” What followed was a rapid shift from rock-and-roll dance sequences to Allen Ginsberg to Charlotte Moorman with the TV cello to an oriental dancer to John Cage to a Navaho drummer to a Living Theatre performance. Throughout, the video image was manipulated by layering images, reducing dancers to a white line outlining their form against a wash of brilliant color, creating evolving abstract forms. Rapid edits of words and movements and seemingly random shifts in the backgrounds against which the dancers perform create a dreamlike sense of time and space.

Nam June Paik pioneered the development of electronic techniques to transform the video image from a literal representation of objects and events into an expression of the artist’s view of those objects and events. In doing so, he challenges our accepted notion of the reality of televised events. His work questions time and memory, the nature of music and art, even the essence of our sensory experiences. Most significantly, perhaps, that work questions our experience, our understanding, and our definitions of “television.”

-Lucy Liggett