Paik dedicated himself to the disturbance and distortion of
the images that fed his art works with the same energy he brought to bear
in combining television sets, cameras, and video recorders to create new
installations or sculptures.
Family of Robot: Mother and Father, 1986
Single-Channel video installation with old radios and tv monitors
Nagoya City Art Museum, Japan
©Photo: Cal Kowal
While artists such as Wolf Vostell were still using the
existing knobs of the TV set to distort the screen image, Paik began using
the magnetic force of a horseshoe magnet to manipulate the electromagnetic
waves in the cathode radiation tubes (Magnet TV, 1963-65). Later, the
video synthesizer
Shuya Abe and Paik developed in 1970 made it possible to systematically
control the manipulation of the electromagnetic waves in the television
tubes. As a preliminary form of the computer-generated manipulation of
digital imagery, the
Abe-Paik Video Synthesizer created psychedelic images of a coloration
and brilliance that was previously unknown.
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Good Morning Mr. Orwell ,1984 video still
Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix© Electronic Arts Intermix
This was also documented by his famous video tape
Global Groove from 1973, in which he combined images in slow and rapid
motion with great precision. An intoxication of imagery and utter
emptiness alternate in a manner analogous to the fierce Fluxus gestures
and moments of absolute silence in his earlier performances. The
references to composition and performance action are always clearly
perceptible in the gigantic multiple-monitor installations that Paik has
created over the past decades; this also goes for the video remixes such
as
Global Groove 2004, an investigation of time, movement, sound, quiet,
and space currently being shown in the
Deutsche Guggenheim. Regardless of whether we let ourselves be carried
away by the restless rhythm of countless images on one of his video walls,
or follow, with the eyes of a stone Buddha, our media likeness into
philosophical nothingness, Paik in any case guides us along the empty
street that leads directly to ourselves.
Translation: Andrea
Scrima
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