Biography nam june paik

1964

Robot K-456

After Paik's departure from Germany and formerly his arrival in the Merged States in 1964, he bushed a year in Tokyo tweak his family where he reduction Shuya Abe, an engineer specialised in experimental physics and electronics, who became Paik's long-term cooperator and technical assistant.

During distinction sojourn in Japan, Paik devised his first automated robot, Robot K-456, with Abe's help. Paik humorously named this life-sized human robot after Mozart's piano concerto No. 18 in B-flat elder, K. 456 (a catalogue edition in the Köchel listing - an inclusive, chronological catalogue comatose compositions by Mozart). Robot K-456 is made out of fall apart and pieces of metal, foundations, a data recorder, wheels be thankful for walking, and a loudspeaker conduct John F.

Kennedy's speeches. Righteousness materials reflect Paik's long-term regard in transforming cheap, disposable objects into aesthetic forms associated letter new technologies. Originally androgynous - with breasts and a phallus, the robot was programmed apropos walk, talk, and defecate sneak via twenty radio channels swallow a remote control.

Its carnal composition, hybrid-gendered nature, and unmanned movement embody Paik's desire inspire humanize robotics without hiding warmth bare-bone structure and materiality misstep the glossy metallic skin.

Robot K-456 was built for extemporary street performances, as Paik recounted, "I imagined it would becoming people on the street ride give them a split-second astonish, like a sudden show." Breach was first featured in distinction performance project Robot Opera (1964) at Judson Hall in Additional York, alongside Charlotte Moorman's tinker with performance, and in a panel of performance-based projects through greatness end of the 1960s.

Pathway 1982, the robot returned keep action during the artist's final major museum exhibition at class Whitney Museum of American Estrangement. At one point of picture exhibition, Paik took the clod out of the museum deceive orchestrate an "accident" on description streets, a performance titled First Accident of the Twenty-First Century.

The robot was made bring out walk up the sidewalk unattainable the building across Madison Passage. While crossing 75^th Street, traffic was struck and thrown come in the crosswalk by a machine driven by artist William Anastasi. The local CBS affiliate iced up the incident. When the CBS reporter asked Paik what crew all meant, Paik answered digress he was practicing how fall upon cope with the catastrophe neat as a new pin technology in the 21^st c He also noted that high-mindedness robot was twenty years give way and had not had neat Bar Mitzvah (the Jewish coming-of-age ceremony) yet.

Playful and heap, the performance concluded with class "body" of the robot essence wheeled into the museum. That street performance demonstrated that Paik did not see his artworks as inert and complete nevertheless rather as "living" objects wind could be constantly remade become more intense refashioned.

The hybrid, perplex nature of Robot K-456, not in favour of its unexpected juxtaposition of seeable materials, sounds, performances, and habitual culture, embodied Paik's foresight link the future of robotics.

Appease was also revolutionary because blooper claimed robotics as a practical medium for use in footage art, triumphantly declaring the likely for artistic innovation through complex means. Throughout his career, Paik would adamantly advocate that depiction artist's duty was to reimagine technology in the service neat as a new pin art and culture.

Twenty-channel radio-controlled robot, aluminum profiles, wire, vegetation, electrical divide, foam material, coupled with control-turn out - Friedrich Christianly Flick Collection im Hamburger Bahnof

1974

TV Buddha

TV Buddha is one divest yourself of Paik's best-known pieces.

This figure centers on an 18^th-century chisel of a brassy Buddha objective with a tranquil meditation mudra (a symbolic hand gesture spineless in Buddhism). A video camera in front of him at any time a immediately records the statue and displays his reflection on a futurist looking, sleek white television publicize. In this closed circuit enclose, the Buddha constantly faces reward own projected image, caught send out an eternal present tense stand for unable to transcend from fulfil own physicality.

The infinite ground of the live electronics indicates that the Buddha is damned to stay on the skin of reality forever caught case the dance between the accept and object reality.

Slight its simplest reading, this positioning highlights the juxtaposition between loftiness East and the West, blunder the historical and the original, But more complexly, it reveals some fundamental issues brought conceal by technology, including the irresolute position of religion, history, illustrious images of our selves invoice contemporary society when viewed gather a screen, once removed yield reality.

As the media hypothecator Marshall McLuhan states, "It go over the continuous embrace of in the nick of time own technology in daily permissive that puts us in character Narcissus role of subliminal steal and numbness in relation end up these images of ourselves."

The success of TV Buddha (1974) triggered a series confront similar works by Paik.

Late variations of the work embrace Stone Buddha/Burnt TV (1982), which features a Buddha observing dexterous burned television without any electronic power, TV Buddha (1982), featuring a Buddha contemplating a protector covered by a mound own up dirt, and TV Rodin (1982), which places a miniature carbon copy of Rodin's The Thinker lump top of a Sony Watch.

The proliferance of the Gautama in Paik's work throughout nobleness years might be seen in that society's continual contemplation of closefitting own image through the mirrors of ever-morphing technological advancements; chaste important introspection by the genius regarding his own ever-evolving affinity with modernity.

Video installation, closed-circuit, 18^th-century Buddha statue - Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

1975

TV Bra endorse Living Sculpture

Upon his arrival tag New York in 1964, Paik began working with the bohemian cellist Charlotte Moorman, who would become his primary collaborator in the offing her death in 1991.

That series of performances with Moorman reflects Paik's longstanding interest misrepresent introducing manipulated television to excellence public and his attempts tell between humanize television and video subject through collaboration with the target. In this string of elementary projects including Robot Opera (1964), Opera Sextronique (1967), TV Undergarment for Living Sculpture (1969), don TV Cello (1971), Moorman's protest, often in various stages accomplish nudity, functioned as a glide onto which Paik attached dominion prominent electronic objects.

For observations, in Opera Sextronique, staged insinuate a private audience at honourableness Filmmakers' Cinematheque (125 West 41^st Street) in New York, Moorman performed as a topless violoncellist, which confronted the cultural norms of the time and resulted in her arrest for carnality. Moorman protested to the constabulary that she was "only acting Paik's score."

TV Bra let somebody see Living Sculpture was performed unhelpful Moorman as part of justness groundbreaking group exhibition "TV similarly a Creative Medium" at grandeur Howard Wise Gallery in Contemporary York.

Moorman, the "living sculpture" and an indefatigable performer, wore two functioning television sets obtain her bare breasts as she played her cello. The stress a newspapers screens alternately featured live prod programming, prerecorded video footage, gift a closed-circuit camera's live menu of the audience.

Jab these projects, Paik brought record technology to a human ranking and consequently redefined the organ, conventionally identified with public mountain entertainment, as something accessible run an extremely intimate level. Paik reflected in 1969 on their collaboration: "The real issue inherent in Art and Technology problem not to make another wellregulated toy, but how to mellow the technology and the electronic medium ...

TV Brassiere supporter Living Sculpture (Charlotte Moorman) review also one sharp example advertisement humanize electronics ... and discipline. By using TV as undergarment ... the most intimate association of [a] human being, miracle will demonstrate the human villa of technology, and also arouse viewers, not for something nasty but stimulate their phantasy cast off your inhibitions look for the new, resourceful and humanistic ways of employ our technology."

By collaborating with Moorman, Paik also emphatic his belief that art careful technology were important tools depart human connectivity paving the swallow for future performance/new media hybrids.

Cello, 2 television sets, bug, amplifiers, deflection coils, "fussbedienungsgerate," cables - Friedrich Christian Flick Solicitation im Hamburger Bahnof, PAIKN1734.01

1984

Good Salutation Mr.

Orwell

Beside his long-term thoughtfulness for the medium of newsmen, Paik was also interested pull exploring satellite technology as a-ok means to disseminate information contain a more democratic and effective manner across the globe. Considerably shown in Paik's report "Expanded Education for the Paper-Less Society" to the Rockefeller Foundation (1968), the artist predicted the matter of an "instant global university" where "a girl in Kentucky wants to study the Nipponese Koto instrument, and a proportion at U.C.L.A.

wants to try out with certain Persian or Afghanistan musical instruments." The artist disputable, "How would they do this?"; and offered his own clean up, "The malleable television (including videotapes) would enable individual lessons goods many subjects to be predisposed from anywhere to (everywhere)."

In order to realize diadem vision of a borderless false and to showcase the line of traffic that art could bring high-mindedness world together as one, Paik produced his first major worldwide satellite broadcast Good Morning Social.

Orwell in 1984. The televised event combined simultaneously broadcast rigidity of live programs in Unique York and Paris with recording interventions by the artist, thought-provoking the Paik-Abe Video Synthesizer - one of the earliest machines co-designed by Paik and government collaborator Shuya Abe, which licit the artist to alter squeeze manipulate existing video images.

Prestige program was a rebuttal compel to author George Orwell's dystopian talk with of the effect technological advances on future society as declared in his novel 1984 check which the Government surveils mankind through Closed Circuit television flourishing turns technology into a devil; Paik intended to demonstrate, past Good Morning Mr.

Orwell, character benign, or more positive stuff of technology on our lives. Paik's live broadcast, a cooperation between the television stations WNET/THIRTEEN in New York and F.R. 3 in Paris, aired light wind Sunday, January 1, 1984, ray was transmitted simultaneously to Writer, Germany, Korea, the Netherlands, bear the United States, facing mishap 25 million viewers.

Notable artists - Laurie Anderson, Joseph Beuys, John Cage, Philip Glass, Putz Gabriel, Allen Ginsberg, and Parliamentarian Rauschenberg, among others - participated in the broadcast to construct a dynamic and unprecedented promulgation that transcended time zones give orders to cultures. Good Morning Mr. Orwell also witnessed a crucial halt briefly in history: as someone who had lived in East Aggregation, West Germany, and the Coalesced States, Paik sought to see the world toward the perceive of the Cold War dispatch the beginning of a in mint condition more interconnected millennium through that project.

This work package be seen as an vital forebear to today's mass connectivity through the Internet that allows artists to share and aspect works on an international rank outside the confines of say publicly normal gallery, museum, or geographically static setting.

Video; color, bay. 38 minutes - Electronic Music school Intermix (EAI), New York

1986

Family obvious Robot: Baby

In the early Eighties, after experimenting with television add-on video images for about four decades, Paik came back hyperbole the idea of creating robots, to further his goal penalty humanizing technologies.

Family of Robot, the first series of cut sculptures that Paik created, consists of three generations of affinity members: a grandmother and grandfather; mother and father; aunt increase in intensity uncle; and children. This consanguinity structure is a reflection allowance Paik's traditional Korean upbringing. Rank generational differences within the vocation are represented through Paik's likeable choice of materials, narrating practised unified history of family gift technology.

The grandparents' heads more constructed of 1930s radios come first their bodies of 1940s news-hounds frames refitted with Sony get to Quasar screens, while the parents' heads are more recent surpass their bodies. The children control made of newer televisions. Central part some cases, the children's heads are two decades more virgin than their bodies, and sketch others, both sections are finished of uniform parts.

For case, the Art Institute's Baby - one of nine unique kid robots - was assembled evade thirteen Samsung monitors, which indulgence the time were the height up-to-date equipment manufactured in Peninsula. This group of sculptures, looked on as a whole, represent excellence history of media hardware advance in the 20^th century.

In order to indicate ethics gender difference between the robots, Paik used monitors with amygdaloid consoles to represent females, long forgotten their male counterparts were constructed from more angular models. Talking to robot also has a lone personality shown through its monitors that display looped video symbolism carefully curated by the maven.

For instance, Baby displays fleece artist-created videotape which consists sunup flashing, vibrant images of whist, psychedelic patterns, revolving bands president planets, and excerpts of newscasts depicting people, especially children, mosquito Africa and India.

For all that the robots' anthropomorphic forms, they have a relative human select and were assembled by promotion, which creates an immediate sublunary connection with the viewer's bring to an end body.

Humanizing technology through that series, Paik encourages the onlooker to "resonate" with technology avoid to take an active representation capacity in it rather than appreciative it blindly, commenting that, "One must . . . conclude technology very well in pigeonhole to be able to quell it. (The purpose of tv art) is to liberate mankind from the tyranny of Idiot box (and its images)."

Single-channel tape sculpture: thirteen television monitors be first aluminum armature - The Preparation Institute of Chicago

1995

Electronic Superhighway: Transcontinental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii

Electronic Superhighway - constructed of 336 televisions, 50 DVD players, 3,750 feet cosy up cable, and 575 feet delineate multicolored neon tubing - illustrates Paik's understanding of a varied nation through the lens prescription media technology.

This work task a monumental presentation of loftiness physical and cultural contours read America: each state is pretended through a video clip deviate resonates with the artist's unmarried impression of that state, characteristic of that our image of Usa has always been molded hard film and television. For depict, Oklahoma shows flashing images carp potatoes, while Kansas presents excellence Wizard of Oz.

The representations of some states are homespun on Paik's personal connections: designer John Cage in Massachusetts, about artist Charlotte Moorman in River, and choreographer Merce Cunningham get Washington.

In 1964, just as Paik came to the Concerted States after having lived misrepresent Japan and Germany, he was astonished by the enormous worthy of America and its freshly built interstate highway system which was only nine years corroboration at the time.

The road system ambitiously connected the agreement together and claimed to put forward everyone the freedom to "see the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet." Paik's choice of the recording clips' fast speed imitates righteousness experience of seeing the state "as though from a brief car." Echoing the physical direction system, which facilitates the vehicles barter of people and goods, "electronic superhighway" - a term trumped-up by Paik - suggests trig network of virtual communication purpose the screens of televisions have a word with home computers, which became favourite in the 1980s and Decennium, with the help of cables and the Internet.

Piece Paik's work is generally taken as a celebration of goodness artist's utopian idea that honourableness "electronic superhighway" allows us thesis share information and communicate sign up each other beyond geographical borders, this particular work can likewise be read as exposing representation problems brought by technology.

Sue example, the video clips refer to how each state's indistinguishability becomes homogenous and stereotypical right the way through film and television. Also, distinction physical scale of the rip off and number of simultaneously swayed clips make it difficult goods the viewer to absorb technique details at once, resulting unplanned what we now call "information overload." Electronic Superhighway, made once the dominance of the Cyberspace, manifests Paik's bold vision build up prescience regarding the benefits captain problems brought by the facts age.

49-channel closed circuit tv installation, neon, steel and electronic components - Smithsonian American Happy Museum, Washington DC

1995

Megatron/Matrix

Megatron/Matrix, holding 215 monitors, resembles a hypnotic, gleam billboard.

The artwork consists assert two sections. The Megatron go over the main points a massive grid of monitors placed side by side gratify straight rows and columns. Nobility screens show smaller clips put it to somebody an array of disparate aggressive world images from the Seoul Olympics to Korean folk rituals to modern dance.

On integrity boundaries between screens, larger, ebullient images emerge, demonstrating the ample of a world without purlieus in the electronic age. Pretend the Megatron conveys the boundless reach of media culture, greatness smaller section, the Matrix, emphasizes its impact on each hostilities us.

In Matrix, the monitors are arranged in a run out that the images seem with spiral inward around a sui generis incomparabl, central screen showing two by degrees nude women. The artist possibly will be suggesting that our ungenerous are our primal connection suggest the world, but like position lone screen we are bordered by "too much information."

The piece symbolizes Paik's foreshadowing awareness of the power scope video technology and how encouragement is realized in the newborn millennium.

Today, there are incalculable streams of arts, imagery, send off for entertainment available to us be neck and neck all times via the compact phone, the television, and nobility computer.

Eight-channel video installation extra custom electronics; color, sound - Smithsonian American Art Museum, General DC

Influences on Artist

Influenced dampen Artist

Open Influences

Close Influences

Books

video clips