Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik was born in Seoul, Korea on
July 20, 1932. He was the fifth and
youngest child of a textile merchant. In
1947, at the age of 14, he studied
piano and composition with two of Korea's
foremost composers. The family moved
to Tokyo, Japan in 1950 to avoid the
havoc of the Korean War. Paik studied
music, history, art history, and
philosophy at the University of Tokyo from 1953
to 1956. He did his graduate
dissertation on Schoenberg. In 1956, he moved to
Germany to pursue his
interest in avant-garde music. He studied music history
under Thrasybulos
Georgiades at the University of Munich and composition under
Wolfgang
Fortner at the Hochschule fur Musik. He also attended classes
under Karlheinz
Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, David Tudor, and John Cage. Paik lived
in Cologne
for the next five years and then returned to Japan for a short time
to
conduct experiments with electromagnets and color TV sets. In 1964,
Paik
moved to New York and still resides there today. While he lived in
Korea, Paik
had become familiar with the work of Schoenberg. Paik was
interested in
Schoenberg above all others because of his radical
compositions. They reflected
the social atmosphere of Seoul at the time. In
1947, Paik had only one piece of
Schoenberg’s work. It took Paik two
years to convince a record shop owner to
let him listen to what was probably
the only Schoenberg record in Korea. Paik
had only two compositions by which
to judge his "guru." Then one day in
Japan, in 1951, Paik heard a third
piece on NHK Radio. Another of Paik’s great
influences was John Cage, whom he
met in Germany. Meeting Cage, a student of
Schoenberg, was a turning
point in Paik’s life. Paik’s piece Zen for Film
was definitely influenced by
Cage’s 4’ 33", the silent piece. Cage was
devoted to sounds, but Paik was
devoted to objects, yet Cage’s influence is
evident in all of Paik’s work.
Joseph Beuys, like Cage, played an important
role in influencing the
direction of Paik’s video work. Paik’s portraits of
Beuys constitute a
significant body of work. They are more than a homage to
Beuys, they are
an affirmation of video as a new sensorium that expands the
fleeting image on
the television. As Paik’s education was furthered, he became
a key in Fluxus
art. In 1961, he met Fluxus founder George Maciunas, which began
his
participation in Fluxus concerts. The visual characteristics of
Paik’s
concerts gained significance equal to that of the music with his one
man show
Exposition of Music—Electronic Television in 1963. It included
the skull of an
ox, 13 pianos, 13 television sets, a mannequin, and several
sound producing
objects. Upon his return to Japan in 1963, he found that he
could manipulate the
television screens with magnets. He began to conduct
experiments with the help
of an electronics engineer, Shuya Abe. These
experiments were the groundwork for
Participation TV, an active viewer
piece. Abe also assisted Paik in the
production of Robot K-456. In 1965, Paik
bought one of the first Sony video
recorders sold and began to create video
art. Works such as Zen for Film and
Global Groove were the results of
Paik’s newfound medium. In 1970, Paik and
Abe invented a video
synthesizer, which made it possible to manipulate colors,
shapes, and
movement sequences on videotapes and television programs. Paik has
been given
the title of "Father of Video Art," as he was the first to use
video and
television as a viable medium. The Opera Sextronique was one of
Paik’s
"happenings" with Charlotte Moorman, the cellist. It included
Moorman
wearing a battery powered bra with televisions covering her nipples, and
the
Young Penis Symphony, consisting ten young men sticking their penises
through
a paper curtain in time to the music. Opera Sextronique was one of
Paik’s
attempts to integrate sex into his work. Paik once told Manfred Eichel
that
"The five principles of media are: Sex, Violence, Greed, Vanity
and
Deception." Paik used these principles heavily in his earliest works,
thus the
concept of the Opera Sextronique. In the Opera for one act, Moorman
was to
perform topless; however the performance was interrupted by police,
and resulted
in the arrest of Moorman and Paik. The resulting trial was a
damper on his"sex into musical performance" campaign. Global Groove is a video
piece with
surreal visuals and neo-Dada ideas. Paik manipulates multicultural
elements,
art-world figures, and pop iconography. He appropriates Pepsi
commercials and
integrates them with images of contemporary performers such
as John Cage, Merce
Cunningham, and the Living Theatre Dancers. He
synthesizes images of Charlotte
Moorman’s Opera performances and distorts
Richard Nixon’s face. Global
Groove is Paik’s first work with
state-of-the-art editing techniques, and was
one of a series of innovative
and influential videotapes. Global Groove allowed
him to create a vehicle for
the short bits he had produced and to expand the
audience for video art.
Global Groove had a profound influence on video,
television, and contemporary
art. It has set a standard for a new generation of
video artists with its
state-of-the-art technological innovations and
entertaining visuals.
Something Pacific was Paik’s first permanent outdoor
installation that
relates specifically to a site. This site includes the lobby
of the UCSD
Media Center as well as the surrounding lawns. On the lawns, several
ruined
TVs are embedded in the ground along with Buddha sculptures and a
Sony
Watchman is paired with a miniature of Rodin’s Thinker. A lively
interactive
installation of televisions is in the lobby. Here viewers are
able to manipulate
the images from Paik’s videos and MTV broadcasts. This
piece contrasts two
very different experiences—contemplation and reaction.
The broken sets were
once removed up by a group of community service workers
who thought they were
trash, but employees of the university were able to
restore them to their
rightful places. In a series that started with Robot
K-456, which walked,
talked, and defecated beans, Paik used electronics to
create humanoid forms. The
members of the Family of Robot, instead of the
mobile form of "robot," are
televisions stacked up in human forms. These new
robots are architectural in
nature, animated by the videos, which play on
each screen. Family of Robot:
High-tech Child consists of 13 modern
televisions which flash synthesized images
at a rapid pace. Paik’s "child"
represents the child of the future, and
the present, who has been raised with
television as his/her main source of
entertainment and information. The
"child" stands on an older model TV
illustrating the roots of television, and
takes a classical Greek pose seen in
sculptures of young men symbolizing the
artistic roots of the piece. High-tech
Child encompasses the elements of
both humor and irony found in much of Paik’s
work. Megatron/Matrix is a
mesmerizing multimedia installation consisting of a
total of 215 monitors.
Megatron is a 150 monitor, billboard-sized wall of
flashing images forming a
visual commotion. Matrix consists of 65 monitors and
adjoins Megatron. The
video and animations include iconic images from both East
and West, pictures
from the Olympic games in Seoul, scenes of Korean rituals,
David Bowie
concert footage, and computer generated animations. Every now and
then the
entire wall becomes the flag of Canada, Finland or Japan. All of the
monitors
operate independently, but share multiple random combinations of
video.
All of this is set to audio ranging from ritual chants to rock,
and is
controlled by a complicated setup of disc players, computers, and
digital
sequences. "It’s grand scale and technological prowess," says NMAA
chief
curator Jaquelyn Serrver, "demonstrate Paik’s extraordinary capacity to
move
video from the sphere of the ordinary to the limitless domain of
the
imagination. He has transformed television into a form of artistic
expression
particularly suited to our times." Paik’s last public performance
in 1997 at
the Anthology Film Archive in New York City was his piece Coyote
3. The
performance starts with Paik seated at a piano with singer, Dina
Emerson, and
dancer, Simone Forti, standing beside him. Emerson steps up to
the microphone
and begins to imitate the sound of alarms and sirens, while a
video projection
of Beuys growling and speaking is played. Paik accompanies
the video on the
piano, playing broken melodies, sometimes singing along.
These fragments of
music are as diverse as Paik’s influences. All the while
Simone Forti is
dancing and singing. At the end Paik turns the piano over
until it breaks apart.
The lights go out and a laser beam flashed across
the stage while the three
performers smoke cigarettes. "There is a lot
happening on stage and yet very
little, normal motions take on other
significance, time has become fleeting and
geologic. The irrational is given
as much importance as the rational," says
Jonathan Huffman, "Paik
continues to push for new territories, continuing to
redefine situations and
new technologies." Paik has made the world of
television and video art his
own. His broad array of work encompasses several
disciplines from composing
to satellite art. Paik’s varied interests have
helped make his art the first
of its kind. Paik said of his work, "My
experimental TV is not always
interesting, but not always uninteresting, like
nature, which is beautiful,
not because it changes beautifully, but because it
changes." Paik is a
visionary artist, he doesn’t confine himself to the
standards of the art
world, but goes outside of them to find new applications of
art to
technology. Television has become a humanistic tool in the hands of
this
artist. His works are always about the sensual aspects of visual
response and
the joys of watching an image that will disappear. Paik’s
realization of the
limitless potential that lay within the average television
set and his sense of
what he could do with it has gained him the distinction
as the "Father of
Video Art."
Bibliography
Bolz, Diane, "A
Video Visionary," Smithsonian Magazine, October
1997,
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian
/issues97/oct97/hlhts_oct97.html.
Fineberg, Johnathan, Art Since 1940:
Strategies of Being, New Jersey,
1995. Kranz, Stewart, "Interview with Dr.
Billy Kluver" in Science and
Technology in the Arts:A Tour Through the
Realm of Science/Art, eds.
Margaret Holton and Elizabeth S. Fowler, New York,
1974, pp. 53-55.
Lovejoy, Margot, Postmodern Current: Art and Artists in the Age
of Electronic
Media, New Jersey, 1992. Paik, Nam June, Video Time- Video Space,
New
York, 1993. Smagula, Howard, Currents: Contemporary Directory in the
Visual
Arts, New Jersey,1989. http://www.plexus.org/morgan/paik.html
http://www.roland-collection.com