Nam June Paik is a Korean-born artist who is best known for artworks that incorporate video technology as their core element. Paik was born in 1932 in Seoul (pronounced sole), the capital of what is now South Korea. He began his artistic life as a musician, trained in piano and composition. In 1950, his family moved to Tokyo, where Paik attended the University of Tokyo. He graduated with a degree in Aesthetics and wrote his thesis on Arnold Schönberg, the avant-garde composer. Paik then went to Germany where he pursued his interest in new music, and where he first incorporated technology into his art by including tape-recorded sounds in his composition String Quartet.

Within the next few years in Germany, Paik came into contact with other avant-garde artists, notably the composer John Cage, whom Paik met in 1958 at a new music course both were attending in Darmstadt, Germany. In 1961, Paik met George Maciunas, founder of the Fluxus movement. Fluxus can be loosely described as a radical art movement whose participants both integrated different art forms into a single composition and invented new art forms, such as Happenings, a forerunner of performance art. (Perhaps one of the best known of the Fluxus artists is Yoko Ono.) One art historian has written: "The work of Fluxus, a notoriously definition-defying group of artists, raises fundamental issues about the nature of the art object and the boundaries of academic study. Within the Fluxus aesthetic, performance is to be viewed as a complex field of activities—visual, textual, and sonorous…To understand the work of Fluxus effectively, one needs to develop the concept of ‘inter-media,’ which can be defined as the conceptual ground between media or traditional art disciplines." Paik had been following a similar path on his own. In 1959, prior to meeting Maciunas, Paik had begun to integrate technology (such as tape-recorded sounds) and action into his musical compositions and it was also in 1959 that Paik first expressed theoretical and artistic interest in television. His involvement with Cage, Maciunas, the German artist Joseph Beuys (pronounced boyz), and others in Fluxus, gave him a broader arena within which to develop his experimental and imaginative ideas about art forms.

In 1963, Paik bought 13 secondhand television sets and, in March, had the first exhibition and show of his video art. It was related to his music and was titled, "Exposition of Music—Electronic Television." Later that year, while performing in Japan, he met electronics engineer Shuya Abe (pronounced ah bay), with whom he collaborated on ways to transform the video image. After moving to New York he developed a close working relationship with the cellist Charlotte Moorman, and they performed together around the world. Paik participated in the annual Avant-Garde Festivals held in New York, and in 1965 his televisions were shown as part of a piece by John Cage and the choreographer Merce (pronounced merss) Cunningham called Variations Number 5 with Electronic Television, seen in a film by Stan Vanderbeek shown at Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center. One of his better known pieces from this period is called TV Bra for Living Sculptures, in which Charlotte Moorman performed on the cello while wearing a bra made of wires and two small television screens that broadcast images during the musical performance.

The Artwork

Internet Dweller: btmj.twelve.jhgd, 1997 is the twelfth in a series of Internet Dweller pieces (hence the number "twelve" in the title). The titles are written in the form of Internet addresses, but the initials that surround the word "twelve" are those of friends of the artist.

The artwork consists almost entirely of technological elements, from two 1950s-era television cabinets to clocks and circuit boards. At the top is a 1950s-era light fixture. Directly in the center is a large camera lens, with a red light emanating from the center. The video images that are broadcast from the three screens are generated by chance and include both representational and abstract forms. Some of the recognizable images include politicians, newscasters, dancers, musicians, artists (Joseph Beuys appears several times), landscapes, seascapes, cityscapes, and ancient monuments (Pyramids, Stonehenge, Greek and Roman ruins), as well as Moorman and Paik in a performance piece. Among the abstract aspects are brightly colored shapes, both static and moving, a frequently repeated heart-shaped motif, and a silhouette of what appears to be a flying bird that also appears repeatedly. On the left side of the upper cabinet are painted images of birds and lettering, reminiscent of East Asian paintings of nature. In the center, amid the birds, appears to be a television set (with "rabbit ears" antennae). Paik’s signature is at the bottom of the painting.

The choice of components has set up some interesting juxtapositions. The very up-to-date title, the circuit boards, and the brightly colored, rapid-fire video images are juxtaposed with 40- to 60-year-old cabinetry and trim (the light fixture and the clocks), not to mention the 120+ year-old electric light, all of which were considered very modern and ‘cutting edge’ in their own days. Thus, the exterior (including the painted imagery on the side) is older and more static, although still functional and ‘relevant,’ while the interior is very contemporary and continually moving and changing. In total, however, none of the components is in a context for which it was originally devised or intended. Paik used the basic design and/or function of the objects, but invented new purposes for each one. Recalling the Fluxus format, this artwork must be seen from the standpoint of "inter-media."

The organization of the various components forms a face with the screens as the eyes and the mouth, the lens as the nose, and the clocks as the ears. The "humanoid" imagery can be extended to include the light fixture as hair, or a crown, or perhaps a symbol like a light bulb over the head of a cartoon character, signifying a multitude of ‘bright ideas.’ The dials beneath the lens might be seen as a mustache, and so on. The frames around the "eye" screens have been painted gold (matching the frame around the "mouth" screen).

The artwork may be read in a number of ways. Perhaps most significant is the nature of the relationship of the viewer to the artwork. In the true spirit of Fluxus performance, this piece draws the viewer in as a participant. In its conventional role, the audience has been conditioned to look at art, seeing it as a one-way relationship. The audience has also been conditioned to look at a television and to see it as a passive object that can be controlled and that displays images to be observed. Internet Dweller is both a work of art and television, so the audience would expect to look at the three screens in this artwork and the viewing relationship would fit the conventions. However, while looking at the artwork it begins to change to a two-way, push-pull, inviting/repelling relationship. One component that draws the viewer in is the video imagery. One can become attached to watching the images that fly by at such a quick pace, and the video gains a hold on the viewer.

Another aspect that shifts the viewing relationship is the lens. The usual function of a lens is to observe a subject. As part of Internet Dweller the lens thus reverses the viewer’s role to that of the "viewed." This is no longer a passive art object under the viewer’s observation and control. Rather, it is also observing. The viewer moves from a dominant role to, at least, an interactive relationship and possibly even a submissive relationship as the power of the artwork begins to dominate. Even the knobs on the television cabinets reinforce this inverse relationship since, unlike the televisions with which the audience is familiar, these knobs cannot be used to control the actions of the object. The traditional act of observing a passive object now becomes a perhaps less comfortable dynamic, two-way relationship.

There is a strong primitive aura about the work. The title itself provokes thought. The term "dweller" is often found in anthropological studies of both prehistoric and so-called primitive peoples. Given the composition of the artwork, as a face reminiscent of masks, icons, or ritual imagery, Internet Dweller can be seen as a modern-day totem, and the title a descriptive label of its ritualistic function. Contributing to this viewpoint is the linking of this "technology figure" with the painting on the side. The simple, line-drawn nature scene, recalling both traditions in Eastern art and Western prehistoric cave paintings, has been applied to the blank surface of a television cabinet, which housed one of the most influential technological inventions of all time. By including it on the surface of an object that has drawn the viewer in, the painting acts as a sort of spell-breaker and balances the power. Given the participatory role of the viewer and the iconic nature of the artwork, a question arises as to whether the title refers to the object or the viewer.

Paik has always probed that "conceptual ground between media or traditional art disciplines," combining seemingly unrelated components, or introducing seemingly alien elements into traditional forms, all in startling and provocative ways. More than anything his work shakes the audience from its conventional and conditioned approaches to art. Internet Dweller is a powerful example that forces the viewer into new relationships with art.

1. Simon Shaw-Miller "Concerts of Everyday Living: Cage, Fluxus and Barthes, interdisciplinarity and inter-media events" Art History:19; March, 1996; pp.1-25.