Thobie and I presented a presentation on Nam June Paik, here is the information and the presentation we presented to the class.
Nam June Paik is 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.
He was born on the 20th of June 1932 in Seoul (Korea) and died on the 29th January 2006, He left Korea during the war and then he graduated from University of Tokyo in 1956 concluding his studies of the history of art and the history of music with a thesis on Arnold Schonberg
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, concluding his studies of the history of art and the history of music with a thesis on Arnold Schonberg. 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 the fluxus he did the exposition of musik/electronic television that was the first exhibition including TV monitors
In Japan he met Shuya Abe and for the year he started to experiment with electromagnet and colour television. And within that year he visited New York and he did collaboration with Charlotte Moorman.
Paik's initial artistic explorations of the mass media of television were presented in his first solo exhibition in 1963, Exposition of Music—Electronic Television, at the Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, Germany. This milestone exhibition featured Paikís prepared televisions. Paik altered the sets to distort their reception of broadcast transmissions and scattered them about the room, on their sides and upside down. He also created interactive video works that transformed the viewers' relationship to the medium. With these first steps began an astonishing effusion of ideas and invention that over the next 30 years would play a profound role in the introduction and acceptance of the electronic moving image into the realm of art. All of his work is very aesthetically pleasing. With most of the pieces he creates some sort of structure, giving the audience a sculptured presentation to look at as well as the visual media. The More the Better, was created in (1988) and this is a fine example of the structural brilliancy of his work. He uses a lot of colour in his work, this just simply adds to the aesthetic pleasure of his work.
In his Paik changes the sets
“TV Clock”. The piece consist of twenty-four TV monitors lined up and 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
Influences
Ø Karlheinz Stockhausen-composition
Ø John Cage-electronic music (elektronische musik)
Ø Shuya Abe- experiment with electromagnet and colour television
Ø George Maciunas- Founder of the radical art movement Fluxus
I think that Paik is a very creative guy. He thinks a lot beyond the norm of the way that TV is used or seen. In his work he manipulates the images on the screen and he also thinks about the aesthetics of his installation. He has a lot of influences and he has influenced a lot as well.
The rest of the information here is both of our resurch. With the information at the botom being what we used on the hand out.
Nam June Paik's journey as an artist has been truly global, and his impact on the art of video and television has been profound. To foreground the creative process that is distinctive to Paik's artwork, it is necessary to sort through his mercurial movements, from Asia through Europe to the United States, and examine his shifting interests and the ways that individual artworks changed accordingly. It is my argument that Paik's prolific and complex career can be read as a process grounded in his early interests in composition and performance. These would strongly shape his ideas for media based art at a time when the electronic moving image and media technologies were increasingly present in our daily lives. In turn, Paik's work would have a profound and sustained impact on the media culture of the late twentieth century; his remarkable career witnessed and influenced the redefinition of broadcast television and transformation of video into an artist's medium. John Hanhardt
Guggenheim Museum of Art
Senior Curator of Film and Media Arts http://www.paikstudios.com
June 20th, 1932
Born in Seoul (Korea), the fifth son of a textile manufacturer
1956
Paik graduates from the University of Tokyo, concluding his studies of the
History of Art and the History of Music with a thesis on Arnold Schonberg
1958-63
Meets John Cage; works in the Studio fur elektronische Musik at WDR,
Cologne
1963
Participates in "Fluxus. Internationale Festspiele neuester Musik",
Wiesbaden; "Exposition of Musik / Electronic Television", the first
exhibition including TV monitors, is shown at Galerie Parnass, Wuppertal
1963-64
Travels to Japan; meets Shuya Abe; experiments with electromagnets and
color television; visits New York, collaborates with Charlotte Moorman
1965
First solo exhibition "Electronic Art" in the USA at Galeria Bonino, New
York; buys the first portable video recorder
Nam June Paik
He was born on the 20th of June 1932 in Seoul (Korea) and died on the 29th January 2006. He is a composer, performer, and video artist--played a pivotal role in introducing artists and audiences to the possibilities of using video for artistic expression. (Liggett 2008: www)
Influences
Ø Karlheinz Stockhausen-composition
Ø John Cage-electronic music (elektronische musik)
Ø Shuya Abe- experiment with electromagnet and colour television
Ø George Maciunas- Founder of the radical art movement Fluxus (Hanhardt 2006: www)
Nam June Paik's initial artistic explorations of the mass media of television were presented in his first solo exhibition which was in 1963 called the Exposition of Music—Electronic Television, in Germany. Paik altered the sets to distort their reception of broadcast transmissions and scattered them about the room, on their sides and upside down. He also created interactive video works that transformed the viewers' relationship to the medium. With these first steps began an astonishing effusion of ideas and invention that over the next 30 years would play a profound role in the introduction and acceptance of the electronic moving image into the realm of art. (Lynch 2000: www)
This is an image the piece called “TV Clock” created in 1989. The piece consist of twenty-four TV monitors lined up and 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
I think that Paik is a very creative guy. He thinks a lot beyond the norm of the way that TV is used or seen. In his work he manipulates the images on the screen and he also thinks about the aesthetics of his installation. He has a lot of influences and he has influenced a lot as well.
I feel this presantation went very well. I leanrt alot from this piece of work. Finding another artist I am very interested in. The use of asthetics in his work is beautiful. Hopefully I will be able to incorporate some of his wonderful ideas into my own.