Week 6 – Analogue Videography

Nam June Paik

Who is the practitioner and when was he practicing?

Nam June Paik, (1932-2006) is a South Korean audio-visual artist, working over four decades since the 1960s and is often referred to as the “father” of video art (Brooks, 2014 para. 1).  His work centered around the intersection of art and technology and possibilities in the future, including his five predictions from the 1970s, relevant to technology today; the Internet, video as art, climate crisis, global media and smartphones (TATE, 2019)

What is the title of the video you have chosen to analyse?

Global Groove, 1973

https://youtu.be/7UXwhIQsYXY

With the video, you are examining when was it produced?

The video was produced in 1973, Paik had been experimenting with video and televisions in his artworks, distorting and manipulating video images, since the early 1960s.  He was interested in the cross over between mass media and art on television.  (TATE, n.d., para. 5)

 

How was the video authored?

Global Groove is a 28-minute video artwork made in collaboration with performers and artists including John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Allen Ginsberg and Charlotte Moorman.  Paik juxtaposed television footage and commercials with music, dance and art performances edited into a video montage (Electronics arts intermix, 2020, para. 1-2). The video is manipulated using a variety of editing techniques such as colourisation, audio and video synthesis and layering.  Paik also distorted the video using non-traditional methods, such as distorting Richard Nixon’s face with the use of magnets placed on the television sets (Roswell, 1995, para.3)

 

How was the video published?

As per this week’s lecture, Paik’s artwork Global Groove was published on analogue video, the same as early television.  The analogue video uses electronic waves to create representations of sounds and visuals.  Video signals are created with a camera and can be broadcast visually and audibly at the same time, making video ‘the first truly audiovisual medium that, in contrast to film, does not generate images as a unit and does not display the materiality of a film strip’ (Spielmann 2008, p.1).   During the 1960s, video technology developed with the introduction of the portapak video camera and by the late 1960s included the technology to replay and rewind, not only recording.  This was also a time of experimentation of electronic signals manipulating the electronic voltage and frequency to produce video and sound effects in the devices (analogue image processor, synthesiser and analogue computer) (Spielmann 2008, p.2).

As Paik was interested in technology, video provided a new medium to experiment with during this time.  Horsfield notes the use of video in art along a similar timeline ‘artists embraced video because it was new, had significant undeveloped aesthetic potential, and could be used as a medium for personal expression… in the late 60’s and early 70’s, the handful of early video practitioners enthusiastically embraced all the different uses of new medium’ (2006, p.3).

 

How was the video distributed?

The distribution of Global Groove through broadcast television was important to Paik and the meaning of the artwork.  Paik was experimenting with television programming as art installations, which he referred to as “participation T.V.”, working with the TV Lab at WNET/Thirteen with the broadcast.  Using mass media to present the artwork was integral, ‘His 1973 transmission Global Groove commenced with a prophecy; “This is a glimpse of the video landscape of tomorrow, when you will be able to switch to any TV station on the earth, and TV Guide will be as fat as the Manhattan telephone book.”’ (Brooks, 2014, para. 13).

 

Global Groove was also shown within another of Paik’s work, art installation TV Garden 1974-1977, at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, in Dusseldorf Germany and later restaged for his exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2000. In this installation, video monitors are placed in the gallery hidden by live plants, all playing Global Groove on repeat.  Displaying the artwork in a gallery setting this way, juxtaposes video technology against nature (Guggenheim Museum, 2000, para. 2)

Nam June Paik TV Garden 1974-7 (2002) Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (Düsseldorf, Germany) © Estate of Nam June Paik Photo: Tate

 

References:

Brooks, B, 2014, ‘How Nam June Paik Used Technology to Search for a Deeper Humanity’, Artspace, 31 Oct, viewed 19 April <https://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/close_look/close-look-nam-june-paik-52522>

Electronics Arts Intermix, 2020, Global Groove, Electronics Arts Intermix, viewed 19 April 2020,<https://www.eai.org/titles/global-groove>

Guggenheim Museum, 2000, Nam June Paik TV Garden, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, viewed 19 April 2020, <https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/9537>

Guggenheim Museum, 2004, Nam June Paik Global Groove, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, viewed 19 April 2020, <https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/13077>

Horsfield K, 2006 ‘Busting the Tube: A brief history of Video Art’ Video data Bank.

Lister, M et al 2009, ‘New Media: A Critical Introduction’. Routledge, New York.

Roswell, C, 1995, Global Groove, blog, viewed 19 April 2020, <http://people.wcsu.edu/mccarneyh/fva/P/Global_Groove_365.html>

Spielmann, Y., 2007. ‘Video: The Reflexive Medium’. MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts.

TATE 2019, 5 Times Artist Nam June Paik Predicted the Future, Youtube, TATE, London, viewed 19 April 2020, <https://youtu.be/yMUJB5aFvdo>

TATE, n.d., Nam June Paik – Exhibition guide, TATE, viewed 19 April 2020, < https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/nam-june-paik/exhibition-guide>

 

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