Thursday, November 1, 2012

Nam June Paik's Screen Park





1. Megatron/Matrix *(1995) 
Eight channel computer driven video installation with 215 monitors, color, sound. 
Megaton: 126x270x24 inches. 
Matrix: 128x128x24

2.The More the Better, (1988) 
Three channel video installation with 1,003 monitors and steel structure; 
color, sound; 
approx. 60 ft. high.

These two pieces all formally very related. They are all made by large number of monitors and include motion and sounds to visualize a bigger picture. 

Megatron/Matrix is roughly the size of a billboard and holds 215 monitors. The mixes images are from the Korean folk rituals and some are from modern dance.In these two pieces, the artist presents his creation and ideas by two different dimensions. By the smaller clips playing simultaneously on multiple monitors, some larger animated images flow across the boundaries between screens. The timeless moment are suggesting a world without borders in the electronic age under forever-going pop culture.
Today, the fusion of pop music, commercial culture, and nationalist symbols are taking the world. Paik's video installation works just express his awareness of this overwhelming power of television.

Video has the potential to be “a new technology, experimental sphere of production, and an alternative form of television.” 

As the video works arising in the visual world, the three categories, documentary video, artistic video, and technical-aesthetic video, have expanded their context and format in different ways. The numerous potentials video art brings to this world is shaping and varying the electronic culture and the core medium, television. I think in this way, video and television are developing and arising alongside with the technical improvement and conceptual updating.

Old vs. New.
Why the olds matter?

Compared with digital camera devises, magnetic tapes and Porto Pac camera feel more “real” to me. I can see them, touch them, and that give me a feeling that the film I’m making is real too. I guess I will be more confident and believe the real tapes in hands are more save rather than the digital data in a flash drive or a computer, which can be easily ruined by a bottle of water. 

------ “TV Bra for Living Sculpture”, Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman.

I think this “Living Sculpture” video performance/installation is very bizarre but interesting and genius.  Charlotte was playing a cello while wearing a bra with small TV screens made by Paik over her breasts.
Bar is a very intimate thing to all female, and Paik made it into something cold and new, two TV screens. It is a very sharp example to express the intrusion of technology and humanize electronics. However, the female cello player seemed very comfortable with the TV bra and she’s performing beautiful music. That demonstrates the harmonious relationship between people and human use of technology.

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