Paik, Nam June

(b. 1932), Korean-born artist. Nam June Paik is recognized worldwide as the father of video art. He has produced a large number of video art works using television as a creative medium and diverting it from its conventional position and connotation.

Paik lived in Germany in the early 1960s and was an important member of the post–neo-Dada collective Fluxus. He was inspired by the Fluxus group's concert-based style, where different elements are referred to, including sounds, objects, and objects that produce sound. Through his own avant-garde works, Paik devoted himself to breaking down the barriers between high art and pop culture and to linking the world of art, media, technology, pop culture, and the avant-garde.

In 1963, Paik produced his first musical and video work, using a revolutionary way of electromagnetically deforming pictures. He was also the first artist to take advantage of Sony's portable video kit, the "portapak," with which he filmed Pope Paul VI's 1964 visit to New York. Paik showed the recording the same evening at the Café à Gogo. Paik's work calls into question the communication codes of a society accustomed to the institutional style of television and suggested an alternative type of television. In 1977, he conducted experiments with satellite transmission and sculpted constructions with stacked TV monitors that formed a monumental pyramid, a robot, and an aquarium. One of his impressive cybernetic installation works is The More the Better, produced in 1988, a media tower composed of 1,003 TV monitors, for the Seoul Olympic Games. The provocative and prophetic style of Paik's video installation has contributed to the creation and development of a new trend in postmodern art around the world.

Hanhardt, John G. (1982) Nam June Paik. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, in association with W. W. Norton.

Stooss, Toni, and Thomas Kellen. (1993) Nam June Paik: Video Time, Video Space. New York: H. N. Abrams.