Paik: the Father of Video Art

Pioneer of Video Art

In comparison to many mediums of art, video art is one of the newest, with the first portable video and audio recorder being released to consumers in 1965. Technology since has advanced, with different means of recording, and displaying the images. One of the first to popularize video art was Nam June Paik. He used video installations to exhibit most of his work, combining sculpture, performance, music, and film. From when he bought his first Sony Portapak in ’65 to his death, Paik influenced artists everywhere, creating minimal pieces that satisfy the viewers sense of sight and hearing. Nam June Paik used the technology at the time to the fullest, he experimented with image manipulation, created a video synthesizer, and used television sets in his installments. He is known as the father of video art.

Nam June Paik, a Korean-American and Neo-dadaist, was born in Seoul, South Korea on June 20th, 1932 where he lived with his family till 1950, fleeing from the Korean War. After moving from Hong Kong to Japan, Paik graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1956, where he studied the History of Art and the History of Music. From Tokyo, he then moved to Germany to study at Munich University and the Freiburg Conservatory. There he met Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, Joseph Beuys, and Wolf Vostell, all whom are influential in his work and some being members of Fluxus.

While in Germany, Nam June Paik was a member of Fluxus, a Neo-Dada avant-garde art movement, which was famous for the minimal work by its popular members. Started in 1961, by George Maciunas, the first event took place in New York City, followed by Fluxus festivals in Europe a year later. Many of the Fluxus artists created their work with materials they had at hand, creating simple pieces without out outsourcing, along with collaborating with one another, which lead to events and Fluxus happenings. These events brought performance, music, poetry, and film together, experimenting with mediums. Paik participated in “Fluxus, Internationale Festspiele neuester Musik” (Fluxus International Festival of Very New Music) in 1962. He performed to Composition 1960 #10, by La Monte Young, for Zen for Head in which he dipped his head into a bowl of tomato juice and dragged it across a long piece of paper. Paik’s Exposition of Musik/Electronic Television consisted of television sets scattered around the room that had distorted images caused by magnets, four destroyed pianos, mechanical sound devices, multiple video installations, and a fresh ox head above the entrance.

Back in Japan in 1964, Paik met Shuya Abe, an electronic engineer, which lead to more experimentation with electromagnets and their effects on television sets. In 1965, they release “Robot K-456” (pictured on right) a non-human artist that was meant for human interaction in society. Paik’s idea was to have it meet people in the streets to surprise them. “In anthropomorphic terms, the robot started out in life as being an androgyne. In Japan, it had a sandpaper and flint penis. As some considered it bad taste, it was removed before going to America. After then, K-456 was said to be feminine.” (Reuben Hogger cybernetic zoo) Paik used this 20-channel robot in multiple performances, such as Robot Opera in 1964 in Judson Hall, New York, in which he controlled the robot with a performance by Charlotte Moorman. Also in 1964, Nam June Paik exhibited Zen for Film an endless loop of unexposed film ran through a projector which results in a white screen with the occasional appearance of scratches and dust that damaged the reel. This is similar to a fellow Fluxus artist, John Cage, who used silence in his music

When Sony released its first portable video recording device to the consumers in 1965, the Sony Portapak became the independent video artists dream come true. The Sony CV-2400 Video rover sparked the interest of Nam June Paik, although it is said he had a similar device before the release. His first recording was the pope’s procession on Fifth Avenue in New York city. He then exhibited the footage at Cafe A-Go-Go, which inspired more artists to use this new medium.

In 1966, Paik and Jud Yalkut collaborated in Beatles Electronique which consisted of footage from A Hard Days Night, a mockumentary style comedy film directed by Richard Lester that stars The Beatles. This showed some of Nam June Paiks early electronics work that manipulated popular icons of the time period.

On February 9th, 1967, Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman, an American avant-garde artist who is involved with Fluxus, premiere Paik’s Opera Sextronique. This piece required Charlotte Moorman to perform four movements, each involved less clothing, first in pasties, then topless, bottomless, and finally fully nude. The first movement was primarily in the dark as Moorman performed with blinking lights on her bikini. The second movement was interrupted by police officers arresting Moorman due to her lack of clothing, she was topless with a black skirt. This movement included her performance of International Lullaby by Max Mathews, the father of electronic music, by bowing the cello with various objects. Paik mentioned, “The purge of sex under the excuse of being ‘serious’ exactly undermines the so-called ‘seriousness’ of music as a classical art, ranking with literature and painting. Music history needs its D. H. Lawrence, its Sigmund Freud” (Electronic Arts Intermix) The only footage of this even was filmed by Jud Yalkut, a fellow pioneer of video art.

While Paik worked at WGBH-TV in 1969, a non commercial television and radio broadcast service in Boston, Massachusetts, Nam June Paik teamed up with Shuya Abe to create the Paik/Abe Video Synthesizer (pictured on left). “Combining video feedback, magnetic scan modulation, and non-linear mixing followed by colorizing, generated its novel style imagery.” (Eigenwelt Der Apparatewelt p. 129) This new device allowed Nam June Paik to recreate the effects that electromagnets have on images using the synthesizer. This device consisted of seven inputs, gain controls, non linear processing amplifiers, an RGB summing matrix, and an RGB to NTSC color encoder. With this device he can reroute inputs into one another to create feedback. One of WGBH-TV’s most important programs was The Medium is the Medium, which consisted of works by popular video artists of the time, Allan Kaprow, Otto Piene, James Seawright, Thomas Tadlock, Aldo Tambelini, and of course Nam June Paik. Paik contributed Electronic Opera #1 a 4:45 minute video consisting of effects created with the Paik/Abe synthesizer. In this film, Paik questions who is in control of the viewing experience, in which he tells the audience to close their eyes then turn off the television set. This program was “the widest exposure to the new practice of video art had yet received.” (Rush p. 97)

Later in 1969, Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman performed TV Bra for Living Sculpture which was similar to Opera Sextronique To avoid complications with law enforcement, Paik constructed a bra with small television sets to cover her breasts, trying to achieve his goal of bringing music up to speed with art and literature, and to change the views of sex in art more acceptable.

In 1970, Nam June Paik aired Video Commune (Beatles Beginning to End), a four hour long video consisting of nine reels. This broadcast consisted of music by The Beatles accompanied by imagery that was modified using the Paik/Abe Synthesizer, occasionally interrupted by a Japanese television program showing performances of hit songs at the time. This broadcast was similar to Electronic Opera #1 and that it is “urging the audience to play with the dials of their television set, adjusting brightness and color.” (WGBH) Another version of Video Commune was created in 1972 which was Jud Yalkut’s documentation of Paik’s work at WGBH in Boston.

When Paik was in New York City in 1971, he collaborated with Charlotte Moorman to combine video, music, and performance in TV Cello, which consisted of televisions stacked on top one another in the shape of a cello. They used videos of the live cellist, Karlheinz Stockhausen performing his composition Originale, and played them on the television cello.

Nam June Paik began working at the Television Laboratory at New York’s Public Television Station, WNET, in 1971, which covers Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the three-state New York Metropolitan area. In 1974, WNET aired Paik’s Global Groove which is a 29 minute broadcast of video art, with contributions from artists such as John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, Charlotte Moorman, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. There are also video clips from Paik’s early work and footage by Jud Yalkut and Robert Breer. Influenced by Marshall McLuhan’s idea of a “global village” which could distribute video art, free-of-charge, around the world, the intro to the broadcast states, “This is a glimpse of a video landscape of tomorrow when you will be able to switch on any TV station on the earth and TV guides will be as fat as the Manhattan telephone book” With image manipulation, video feedback, and other effects created using the Paik/Abe Synthesizers, “Global Groove” is a collaboration of performance, art, and music. Few the segments include traditional music performance from around the world, connecting cultures through video art.

Nam June Paik was hired by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1974, a private foundation based in New York City. Paik wrote “Media Planning for the Postindustrial Society – The 21st Century is now only 26 years away” which he proposed the idea of an “Electric Super Highway” Some say that this idea of a global connection inspired the creation of the Internet. In his essay, Paik writes,

“Video-telephones, fax machines, interactive two-way television (for shopping, bibliographies, opinion polls, health care, bio-communication, data transfer from office to office) and many other variations of this kind of technology are going to turn the television set into an ‘expanded-media’ telephone system with thousands of novel uses, not only to serve our daily needs, but to enrich the quality of life itself.”

In 1975, Nam June Paik collaborated with Douglas Davis, Jud Yalkut, and Shigeko Kubota on a 31 minute film called Suite 212 which was considered as Paik’s “personal New York sketchbook.” This film opened with Paik’s The Selling of New York, originally aired on WNET during the late-night schedule, which critiqued New York’s multinational corporations. Much like Nam June Paik’s earlier work, this film included clips from Japanese TV, mostly focusing on commercials of American products. Nam June Paik: Edited for Television was produced for public television as a self portrait of the artist in 1975. This 29 minute film reflects his art and philosophies in Dada, Fluxus, John Cage, minimal art, information overload and technology. It includes clips from Suite 212, Electronic Opera 1 & 2, and performances by Charlotte Moorman and Paik himself.

Also in 1975, Nam June Paik teamed up with Washington State’s Merce Cunningham and video artist Charles Atlas to create Merce by Merce by Paik Part One. Merce Cunningham, an American avant-garde dancer and choreographer that influenced modern dance, has collaborated with other Fluxus artists such as John Cage. In Merce by Merce, Paik used a chroma-keyed blue studio and his video synthesizer to multiply Cunningham, overlaying images over one another, with an audio collage featuring John Cage and Jasper Johns.

Documenta 6, an exhibition of modern and contemporary art in Kassel, Germany in 1977, that featured 622 exhibitors, including Nam June Paik. Nearly 343,000 visitors viewed modern art by artists from around the world, but this event also hosted one of the first live international satellite telecast for artists. This 30 minute broadcast featured work from Joseph Beuys, Douglas Davis, and Nam June Paik. Paik and Charlotte Moorman performed a few of their pieces live from Kassel, such as TV Bra and TV Cello. This telecast was Nam June Paik’s vision of a global network, bringing video art to households throughout the 25 countries it transmitted to, a larger audience than WGBH and WNET.

Merce by Merce by Paik Part Two: Merce and Marcel aired in 1978, which was a 13 minute collaboration between Nam June Paik and Shigeko Kubota, husband and wife. The performance of Merce is mixed with a collage that address the relationship of art and life. The film questions the audience if the image shown is considered dance, such as the busy streets of New York City, or a baby’s first steps. Also included is an interview with Marcel Duchamp by Russell Connor, which has been pieced together by Nam June Paik. Another interview with Cunningham by Connor is superimposed over an earlier Duchamp interview. A year later, in 1979, Nam June Paik became a member of Staatliche Kunstakademie Dusseldorf, the Art Academy of the city of Dusseldorf, Germany, where Joseph Beuys taught ‘monumental sculpture’ from 1961 to 1972.

Nam June Paik produced Lake Placid ’80 in 1980 as a collage for National Fine Arts Committee of the 1980 Olympic Winter Games, which consisted of images of Olympia sports mixed with Paik’s familiar audio and video effects. Some images include the dancers from Paik’s Global Groove, also featuring Allen Ginsberg. The images of Olympic sports are re-edited and manipulated like many of Nam June Paik’s early work, multiplying images, colorizing, or rapid cuts to modify time. This film was aired on Alive from Off Center in 1986, a 21 minute program transmitted by PBS, which was critical to video art because it was a means of distributing work that followed the footsteps of WGBH and WNET.

On New Year’s Day of 1984, Nam June Paik aired Good Morning, Mr. Orwell, a satellite “installation” that was a counter statement to George Orwell’s dystopian vision of 1984 that linked France, Germany, South Korea, and the United States. The 38 minute program consisted of live and pre-recorded segments performed by Laurie Anderson, Merce Cunningham, Peter Gabriel, and Allen Ginsberg, all held together by Nam June Paik’s graphics.

There were two more satellite broadcasts that were put together by Nam June Paik. In 1986, Japan, South Korea, and the United States transmitted Bye Bye Kipling, a 31 minute broadcast that included interviews with Keith Haring and Arata Isozaki, performances by Philip Glass, Kodo Drummers, Charlotte Moorman, Nam June Paik, and Lou Reed, linking the pieces together with Paik’s graphics. This collage of performance, art, and entertainment represented the connection between Eastern and Western cultures. Wrap Around the World, which aired in 1988, connected the United States, Brazil, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Japan, and many more countries. A performance by David Bowie with La, La, La, Human Step, along with an interview with Ryuichi Sacamoto, a Japanese musician. It also featured was Merce Cunningham, the Viennese Art Orchestra, a game of elephant soccer in Thailand, and a car race in Ireland, using Paik’s techniques of piecing them together.

In 1988, Nam June Paik released Dadaikseon (The More the Better) (pictured on right), a giant tower of 1003 monitors, represents October 3rd, which is Korea’s National Foundation day, for the Olympic Games in Seoul. This tower’s home is at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in the suburbs of Seoul, South Korea. This installation plays a loop of videos from Paik’s work to other video artists, some images pictured across multiple monitors, also with quick cuts and graphics. The tower is positioned in a large room, surrounded by a spiral ramp. As the viewer walks the ramp, new images on monitors come into sight. The natural light from the glass-domed ceiling with the light emitting from the monitors represent the story of how daylight was created.

Nam June Paik premiered Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii in 1995, an installation of 343 television monitors, 50 laserdisc players, 50 laserdiscs, 60 video distribution amps, 20 fans, 1 video camera, neon fabricated in the shape of the state borders, and a 200 watt audio system. This large piece, shown at the Lincoln Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C., represents Nam June Paik’s idea of an “Electronic Superhighway” which was first used in his essay “Media Planning for the Postindustrial Society.” Electronic Superhighway consists of images portraying American culture in the individual states, showing the influence by film and television.

In 1996, Nam June Paik suffered from a stroke, leaving him paralyzed on his left side, causing him to use wheelchair for the rest of his life, yet it was not stopping him from creating more work. Two years later, Paik stood up from his wheel chair to shake hands with Bill Clinton, but his pants fell down on camera. His last retrospective was held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York, it was called The Worlds of Nam June Paik. He used the exhibition to show his installation work by utilizing the entire museum space. Shigeko Kubota, his wife, coordinated an accompanying showing of Paik’s video work. Six years later, on January 26, 2006, video art pioneer Nam June Paik passed away in his Miami apartment, due to complications from his stroke a decade earlier. His work is still shown all over the world, and he will always be known as the father of video art, influencing video artists to this day.

Before the release of the consumer video recording device, Sony Portapak in 1965, the only way a video artist would be able to film is to have access to a studio with the expensive equipment. Lynn Spigel describes the effect technology “Early gallery installations in the late 1950s and early 1960s set off new experimentation with television as art, and these experiments especially flourish as video technology became more available and more mobile.” (Spigel p 286) Along with the technology to create video art, the way video art is displayed has changed immensely. Nam June Paik started using television sets in his video installations in 1962. Although he was not the first, Wolf Vostell created TV De-coll/ages which started in 1958. Michael Rush noted in “New Media in Art,”

“In common with the other Fluxus practices of the period, Vostell was calling into question both the materials of art and the practices of culture, in this case the ubiquitous intrusion of television into everyday life.” (Rush p. 125)

Nam June Paik’s video installations use a number of television sets, one of the largest using 1003. He used the Televisions to portray his theme of culture, some that simply play the broadcasts being transmitted at the time, and some that play some of his video collages. In the terms of video installation art and its importance to video art as a medium, Michael Rush puts it simply,

“This ‘total event’ that Vostell spoke of, reflecting the performance influence in video art, recognized that art takes place in a context. Context quickly enough became content as sculptural effects were incorporated into the video presentation.” (Rush p 125)

Before Nam June Paik and Shuya Abe created their video synthesizer, Paik experimented with television sets and the effects on the image from electromagnets. This would have a different effect on Television sets today, not necessarily keeping them in working condition. Using the synthesizer allowed Paik to get the same effects that magnets had on the image, but without the physical contact of the magnets. This meant that Paik could alter the image then display it on a monitor, which would allow him to broadcast it easily, bringing video art to television. Public television was the first to showcase video art of the time, stations such as WNET and WGBH were popular in the New York area. Programs such as Alive from Off Center were important to video art, giving artists the ability to reach out to the audience, Nam June Paik used some of his work to challenge who was in control of the viewing experience. Video art in television changed with culture, one example being MTV and its music videos, Lynn Spigel states, “Television’s various representations of art and its own artistic practices have changed with the larger social and cultural shifts after World War II.” (Spigel p 10)

In the twenty-first century, video art can be show virtually anywhere, with the access of the internet, global recognition is possible for anyone, corporations such as YouTube allow everyone in the world to view your work. Video installation art is a dying medium, less video artists use it to show their pieces, organizing with a gallery to show your work is more difficult than posting it online. Galleries also limit the amount of viewers, not everyone travels across country to see an art exhibition.

Nam June Paik’s work has influenced many video artists, including myself. During a trip to Washington D.C. with my family in 2005, we visited the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the location of Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii. At the time, I had thought that this was one of the biggest video installations I had seen. In 2008, I was lucky enough to participate in the Seoul International Youth Film Festival Camp. During the ten days I was in Seoul, I was able to take a tour of Korea’s National Museum of Contemporary Art. As I walked in I saw the bottom of a massive tower constructed of 1003 monitors. Being the second Paik sculpture that I have seen, I was impressed and wanted to see more, a day later I found myself in a viewing session of some of Paik’s video art. Since then, my work as video artist has been influenced by his pieces, in context to the aspects of which I display my work. When I built my first Monome, an open-source MIDI-controller, I had the idea of using it for video mixing, which was inspired by Nam June Paik and Shuya Abe’s video synthesizer. I would have to create a software version of Paik/Abe synthesizer with similar effects that it has on the image. As I work more on my video art, I will experiment with different means of displaying them, from video DJ’ing to interactive media installations with video.

Nam June Paik will always be an important figure in video art and installation. From a 22.8 meter tall tower of television sets to video art featuring the performance of Charlotte Moorman, and from his work with Fluxus to Electronic Superhighway, Paik’s work has reached out to audiences all over the globe.