The selected artwork for Paik's exhibition covers the second and third floor of the Asia Society. The visitor is greeted by Paik's portrait where he poses in a sitting position surrounded by TV screens and micro controllers. This sets the appropriate sense of an artist who was captivated by all that the technological revolution would bring forth.
The pieces in the exhibition were equally engaging – they all seemed to capture the sense of a true visionary who was not afraid or intimidated by breaking down, playing with, and poking around with new technologies concurrently as they were introduced into society. Paik adopted these technologies and set a goal as an artist to humanize, or add sympathy to otherwise uncommunicative and emotionless devices. Paik might have as well been an early innovator in the artificial intelligence field of computer science, in his own sense.
The quote, “Artists are notorious for dreaming about the future, and in rare cases, they venture out and make dreams a reality themselves” (source) fully embodies the work of Nam June Paik. It was humbling to read his career timeline and become aware that he had thought of an earlier version of Facebook in the 60’s and would later create a prototype of what we would call today, Google Glass, only in the 70’s!
No comments:
Post a Comment