Other Conceptual artists pursued the notion that the idea is a
work of art itself by creating works involving invisible materials,
such as inert gases, radioactive isotopes, or radio waves. In each case,
viewers must base their understanding of the artwork on what they
know about the properties of these materials, rather than on any vis-
ible empirical data, and must depend on the artist’s linguistic de-
scription of the work. Ultimately, the Conceptual artists challenged
the very premises of artistic production, pushing art’s boundaries to
a point where no concrete definition of “art” is possible.
New Media
During the past half century, many avant-garde artists have eagerly
embraced new technologies in their attempt to find fresh avenues of
artistic expression. Among the most popular new media are video
recording and computer graphics.
VIDEOInitially, only commercial television studios possessed
video equipment, but in the 1960s, with the development of rela-
tively inexpensive portable video recorders and of electronic devices
allowing manipulation of recorded video material, artists began to
explore in earnest the expressive possibilities of this new technology.
In its basic form, video recording involves a special motion-picture
camera that captures visible images and translates them into elec-
tronic data that can be displayed on a video monitor or television
screen. Video pictures resemble photographs in the amount of detail
they contain, but, like computer graphics, a video image consists of a
series of points of light on a grid, giving the impression of soft focus.
Viewers looking at television or video art are not aware of the mon-
itor’s surface. Instead, fulfilling the Renaissance ideal, they concen-
trate on the image and look through the glass surface, as through a
window, into the “space” beyond. Video images combine the optical
realism of photography with the sense that the subjects move in real
time in a deep space “inside” the monitor.
NAM JUNE PAIK When video introduced the possibility of
manipulating subjects in real time, artists such as Korean-born Nam
June Paik(1932–2006) were eager to work with the medium. In-
spired by the ideas of John Cage and after studying music perfor-
mance, art history, and Eastern philosophy in Korea and Japan, Paik
worked with electronic music in Germany in the late 1950s. In 1965,
after relocating to New York City, Paik acquired the first inexpensive
video recorder sold in Manhattan (the Sony Porta-Pak) and imme-
diately recorded everything he saw out the window of his taxi on the
return trip to his studio downtown. Experience acquired as artist-in-
residence at television stations WGBH in Boston and WNET in New
York allowed him to experiment with the most advanced broadcast
video technology.
A grant permitted Paik to collaborate with the gifted Japanese
engineer-inventor Shuya Abe in developing a video synthesizer. This
instrument allows artists to manipulate and change the electronic
video information in various ways, causing images or parts of im-
ages to stretch, shrink, change color, or break up. With the synthe-
sizer, artists can also layer images, inset one image into another, or
merge images from various cameras with those from video recorders
to make a single visual kaleidoscopic “time-collage.” This kind of
compositional freedom permitted Paik to combine his interests in
painting, music, Eastern philosophy, global politics for survival, hu-
manized technology, and cybernetics. Paik called his video works
“physical music” and said that his musical background enabled him
to understand time better than could video artists trained in paint-
ing or sculpture.
Paik’s best-known video work,Global Groove (FIG. 36-81),
combines in quick succession fragmented sequences of female tap
dancers, beat-generation poet Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) reading
his work, a performance by Fluxus artist and cellist Charlotte Moor-
man (1933–1991) using a man’s back as her instrument, Pepsi com-
mercials from Japanese television, Korean drummers, and a shot of
the Living Theatre group performing a controversial piece called
Paradise Now.Commissioned originally for broadcast over the
United Nations satellite, the cascade of imagery in Global Groove
gives viewers a glimpse of the rich worldwide television menu Paik
predicted would be available in the future.36-81Nam June Paik,Video still from
Global Groove,1973. Color videotape, sound,
30 minutes. Collection of the artist.
Korean-born video artist Paik’s best-known
work is a cascade of fragmented sequences
of performances and commercials intended
as a sample of the rich worldwide television
menu of the future.Performance and Conceptual Art and New Media 1021