GOODBYE MR. NAM JUNE PAIK! the mischievous old provocateur and pioneer - the future is now
GOODBYE MR. NAM JUNE PAIK! was a message I received by e-mail at the night of 29th January 2006. This great pioneer of electronic media had left us. Only the new fashion he created to tell us stories; his art, remains.
The following morning I attached this message to the entrance door of the offices of the Foundation of Art and Technology, I governed back then.
Nam June Paik was equally known for his acute as well as critical observations of the new media and the social condition around it. In 1976 he declared: "Without electricity, there can be no art".
Nam June Paik has also been credited as responsible for naming the concept "information superhighway" and, most famously the declaration "the future is now"!
Epic in Transition - Where Will We Arrive?
Since the turn of the century many great minds and talented craftsmen have left us to cope on our own. The longing which I would by no means call nostalgic but a sincere realisation that an era where historic contracts were signed and the fashion of building reality as we still know it today had passed. We are at the turn of accepting a great change, we all have new tools within our reach to grasp this somehow altered reality we are in. We have all the knowledge developed by the previous generations still available for us; how do we want to preserve it, what do we want to use it for?
Walter Benjamin raised this concern in the context of storytelling: "The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out."
Still there are also things unchanged: the urge to interact with the world, feeling of friendship, sadness, joy, togetherness, belonging, sharing, also with all critical aspects present. The leading role of a human character, human emotions and the societies we live in, have not yet been replaced by those of machines, abstraction or technology as a focal point of storytelling. As Hannah Arendt reflects on it: "Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it."
The fashion of how to tell a good story may have found new formalities and as such developed new techniques for telling, but the stories are only complete when the audience brings the virtual world into the actual one, combining their own reality with the one perceived from the audio-visual screen. This multidirectional movement is one of the keys for the storytelling of new media art of today. Hoping that this new era will enable us to carry forward with this ancient form in humanity!
One lead we could consider following can be found from the writings of John Steinbeck: "A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight."
Essential reading in New Media Art
all recommended
New Media Art may cause to Think Different!
Digital Media Art Meets Merleau-Ponty
Notions of perception, time and subjectivity are central to all art, where traditionally the visual arts have been understood as spatial and music as a temporal. Audiovisual new media art proves this division to be problematic.
Read more at Discerning Subject in Spacetime
Old and New Media Collide
provides an interesting disposition to the contemporary media
New Media Art from wiki
New media art is an art genre that encompasses artworks created with new media technologies, including digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art technologies, computer robotics, and art as biotechnology. The term differentiates itself by its resulting cultural objects, which can be seen in opposition to those deriving from old media arts (i.e. traditional painting, sculpture, etc.) This concern with medium is a key feature of much contemporary art and indeed many art schools now offer a major in "New Genres" or "New Media".
New Media concerns are often derived from the telecommunications,...
Nam June Paik TV Buddha
- Nam June Paik TV Buddha
- TV Buddha is an enigmatic work by Nam June Paik which consists of a Buddha statue gazing on a video screen, to his own image, being projected there by a closed circuit video camera.
"It is the historical necessity, if there is a historical necessity in history, that a new decade of electronic television should follow from the past decade of electronic music."
Nam June Paik
'Without electricity, there can be no art'
Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik on wiki
Nam June Paik (July 20, 1932 - January 29, 2006) was a Korean-born American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the first video artist.Noah...
Storytelling on wiki
Storytelling is the conveying of events in words, images, and sounds often by improvisation or embellishment. Stories or narratives have been shared in every culture and in every land as a means of entertainment, education, preservation of culture and in order to instill moral values. Crucial elements of stories and storytelling include plot and characters, as well as the narrative point of view.
The earliest forms of storytelling are thought to have been primarily oral combined with gestures and expressions. Rudimentary drawings sc...
'Storytelling reveals meaning without
committing the error of defining it'
Hannah Arendt
Literary references
for Hannah Arendt
vote for your favourites!
Between Past and Future (Penguin Classics) by Hannah Arendt, Jerome Kohn
Arendt describes the loss of meaning of the tradit more...0 points
The Life of the Mind (Combined 2 Volumes in 1) (Vols 1&2) by Hannah Arendt
The author?s final work, presented in a one-volume more...0 points
On Revolution (Penguin Classics) by Hannah Arendt
Tracing the gradual evolution of revolutions since more...0 points
Responsibility and Judgment by Hannah Arendt
Responsibility and Judgment gathers together unpub more...0 points
Hannah Arendt by Julia Kristeva
Twenty-five years after her death, we are still co more...0 points
Julia Kristeva
On feminism, semiotics and female geniuses with acumen
- Julia Kristeva - art and language
- Julia Kristeva could be described as philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, feminist, as well as a novelist. Her concepts cover a vast array of ideas nevertheless always with clarity and cohesion.
Hannah Arendt on wiki
Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906 ? December 4, 1975) was an influential German-Jewish political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact that "men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world."
Arendt's work deals with the nature of power, and the subjects of politics, authority, and totalitarianism. Much of her work focuses on affirming a conception of freedom which is synonymous with collective political action among equals.
Time in New Media
the 1960's genre of short films; is there anything in common?
Read more at Beautiful Promises with Laughter
'The art of storytelling is reaching its
end because the epic side of
truth, wisdom, is dying out'
Walter Benjamin
Literary references
for Walter Benjamin
vote for your favourites!
Illuminations: Essays and Reflections by Walter Benjamin
Studies on contemporary art and culture by one of more...0 points
Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings by Walter Benjamin
"This book is just that: reflections of a hig more...0 points
The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media by Walter Benjamin
This essay, however, is only the beginning of a va more...0 points
The Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin
"Quite simply, the Passagen-Werk is one of th more...0 points
Selected Writings
of Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin on wiki
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (15 July 1892—27 September 1940) was a German-Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator, and philosopher. He was at times associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory and was also influenced by the writings of his younger contemporaries Bertolt Brecht, who developed critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism, and Gershom Scholem, who founded modern, academic study of Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism. Over the last few decades, regard for his work has risen dramatically, making him one of the most important twentieth century thinkers about literature and about modern aesthetic expe...
World through Digital Art
The early pioneers of Digital Art started experimenting already during the 1950's.
'Oscillons' that Ben Laposky, American mathematician and artist, generated by an electronic machine in 1950 are considered as some of the earliest images of the digital realm.
Also, at the end of the 50's Nam June Paik and John Cage meet each other. Both became important leaders of the digital/new media creation.
Read more at World through Digital Art
' A man who tells secrets or stories
must think of who is hearing or reading,
for a story has as many versions
as it has readers '
John Steinbeck
Literary references
for John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck on wiki
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. (February 27, 1902 ? December 20, 1968) was an American writer. He wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939, and the novella Of Mice and Men, published in 1937. In all, he wrote twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books and several collections of short stories. In 1962 Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for...
Nam June Paik
-
Nam June Paik
-
"I used the term information superhighway in a study I wrote for the Rockefeller Foundation in 1974. I thought: if you create a highway, then people are going to invent cars. That's dialectics. If you create electronic highways, something has to hap...
Related lenses
come and vote for your favourite!
Discerning Subject in Spacetime
'In perception we do not think the object and we d more...0 points
Bill Viola - becoming light
Bill Viola, one of the pioneers in video art, exhi more...0 points
Beautiful Promises with Laughter
'Time simultaneously makes the present pass and pr more...0 points
Nam June Paik TV Buddha
Nam June Paik TV Buddha, 1974-82TV Buddha is an en more...0 points
World through Digital Art
Digital Art is a form of Contemporary Art where th more...0 points
' the Future is now '
Nam June Paik
Storytelling livre d'Or
Storytelling Guestbook
Come and share your thoughts!
AppalachianCountry wrote...
Great lens. Thank-you for opening our eyes to what is happening in this area. We are green in it. 5 stars*****
Posted July 01, 2009
chefkeem wrote...
A hearty SquidAngel Blessing for this thought-provoking work. 5*s :)
Posted January 18, 2009
Nam June Paik rarities in auction
Fetching new data from eBay now... please stand by
