Past Exhibitions

Video Synthesizer and “TV Cello” Collectibles, 1965-71 is a well known recording of Nam June Paik’s video manipulations, and shows the psychedelic effects achieved by the Paik-Abe synthesizer, which mixed live broadcast feeds with stored videotape imagery and signal-distorting “noise. Paik is widely considered today as among the first and greatest of the 60s generation of video pioneers. He wrote prescient manifestos about the radical potential of the medium and its ultimate triumph in both art and culture.

Video Trajectories, an exhibition presented in the MIT List Center's Bakalar Gallery, was organized by MIT Professor Caroline A. Jones (October 12-December 30, 2007).  Selections from these works—considered masterworks from video art history—are being presented to a broader public on The Media Test Wall. Nam June Paik’s Synthesizer and “TV Cello” Collectibles, 1965-71 is the fourth presentation in a five-part exhibition series.  Video Trajectories (Redux) will conclude with Gary Hill, Soundings, 1979, (February 2-March 6).

Video is used as a medium by different kinds of artists. All the video artworks in this series were made by artists coming out of theater or dance communities, Conceptual art, Minimalism, performance art, sculpture, sound engineering, and avant-garde music. Some focused on the strange new medium of video itself. Like audiotape, videotape could be recorded, played back, and re-recorded almost instantly. Like photography and film, it faithfully (if electronically) represented anything put in front of it. But unlike film, there was nothing to "see" on the tape itself—it was dependent on the electronic apparatus to be scanned and seen. Moreover, video art was born in the context of a fully commercialized mass medium—television.

Particularly in the U.S., early video artists crafted their tapes with a strongly dialectical eye on "the boob tube." Above all, artists of the 1970s wanted television viewers to wake up to the media world in which they were already living, and to develop an active rather than passive relationship to the medium. Artists working with early video technology attempted to intervene in the intimate psychological relationship that could develop between the average person and his or her television set. Later in the 1980s, home video systems gave every family of means the ability to "be on T.V." but by the 1990s the intimate phase of video art's history was over. Video became increasingly spectacular and it has evolved into present day technologies that allow the projection of high-resolution signals onto a screen, a wall, or the vaulted ceiling of a Renaissance church. Video Trajectories stays with pre-spectacular video, allowing earlier phases of the medium's surprising infancy to come into view.

About the Artist:

Nam June Paik (born in Seoul, South Korea, 1932; died in 2006). Working as a video artist, performance artist, musician, sculptor, filmmaker, writer, and teacher, Nam June Paik was a prolific artist. His association with the Fluxus movement resulted in a diverse range of artistic practices including performance art, experimental music, and “anti-films”.  Paik, however, is best known for his video installations. In some, Paik modified old television sets to create sculptural assemblages.  In others, he modified circuitry or fitted television cabinets with new components to draw attention to reconstituted versions of broadcast signals. By engaging directly with the broadcast signal process Paik often created dazzling sequences of electronic effects. His pioneering work inspired a new generation of artists interested in working with video as an art form.

Solo exhibitions include Global Groove, Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany (2004); Nam June Paik, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (2004); The Worlds of Nam June Paik, Guggenheim Museum, New York (2000); Nam June Paik Retrospective: Videotime, Videospace, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea (1992); Video Time-Video Space, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland joint exhibit with Zürich Kunsthaus, Zürich, Switzerland (1991); Retrospective, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York (1982); Nam June Paik: Projects, Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York, (1977); and Nam June Paik: Werke 1946-1976: Musik-Fluxus-Video (Retrospective), Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany (1976).