Electronic Superhighway — constructed of 336 televisions, 50 DVD players, 3,750 feet of cable, and 575 feet of multicolored neon tubing — is a testament to the ways media defined one man's understanding of a diverse nation. This installation at the Smithsonian American Art Museum was created by Nam June Paik in 1995. Paik was well-positioned to understand how media technologies were evolving: in the 1960s he was one of the very first people to use televisual technologies as an artistic medium, earning him the title of “father” of video art. It illustrates how he interpreted a diverse nation through media technology. The states are firmly defined, but also linked, by the network of neon lights, which echoes the network of interstate “superhighways” that economically and culturally unified the continental U.S. in the 1950s. Nam June Paik is hailed as the father of video art and is credited with the first use of the term "electronic superhighway" in the 1970s. Furthermore, because the image recorded by the video camera could be transmitted to and viewed almost instantaneously on a monitor, people could see themselves “live” on a TV screen, and even interact with their own TV image, in a process known as “feedback.” In the years to come, the participatory nature of TV would be redefined by two-way cable networks, while the advent of global satellite broadcasts made TV a medium of instant global communication. One of the works, , was a towering bank of TVs that simultaneously screened multiple video clips (including one of John Cage) from a wide variety of sources. Later that night, Paik showed the tape at the Café au Go Go in Greenwich Village, ushering in a new mode of video art based not on the subversion or distortion of television broadcasts, but on the possibilities of videotape. In 1969, Kaprow created «Hello,» an interactive video happening for «The Medium Is the Medium,» a thirty-minute experimental television program with six visual artists. Paik's "Electronic Superhighway," a 15- by 40-foot map of the United States comprised of TVs playing video related in some way to the states (i.e. The evolution of these tendencies into a new movement was announced by a 1969 group show, “TV as a Creative Medium.” Held at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York, the show included one of Paik’s interactive TVs, and also premiered another one of his collaborations with Moorman. Best to view in "Original" because other versions resized by Pbase are decidedly unsharp. Well captured. Coining the term “the electronic superhighway,” he imagined a world in which human beings near and far would be connected through radio waves and television … (1982). What Electronic Superhighway overwhelming proves is the increasingly problematic divide between the online and offline worlds; the physical and the virtual. Osorio, En la barberia no se llora (No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop) Shirin Neshat, Rebellious Silence, Women of Allah series. In this section, a detailed case study on one of the most famous art works of Nam June Paik, Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii,1995, will be a core content going throughout the whole section. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super highway" to describe the future of telecommunications. It was not one of my better subjects. He met John Cage in 1958, and soon became involved with the avant-garde Fluxus group, led by Cage’s student George Maciunas. , in which an industrial magnet is placed on top of the TV set, distorting the broadcast image into abstract patterns of light. For Paik and other early adopters of video, this new artistic medium was well-suited to the speed of our increasingly electronic modern lives. The Electronic Superhighway is a large installation, constructed with 336 televisions, 50 DVD players, 3750 feet of cable, and 575 feet of multicolored neon tubing. John Lennon / Yoko Ono Nam June Paik in collaborations with John J. Godfrey, Global Groove, 1973. At Smarthistory, the Center for Public Art History, we believe art has the power to transform lives and to build understanding across cultures. Long before most of the world had heard about this thing called “the Internet” or using terms like “cyberspace” or even “electronic superhighway,” Pool was describing this emerging medium, thinking about its ramifications, and articulating the optimal policies that should govern it. • Electronic Superhighway (2016-1966) is at Whitechapel Gallery, London, until 15 May. We created Smarthistory to provide students around the world with the highest-quality educational resources for art and cultural heritage—for free. One example is. Electronic Superhighway — constructed of 336 televisions, 50 DVD players, 3,750 feet of cable, and 575 feet of multicolored neon tubing — is a testament to the ways media defined one man's understanding of a diverse nation. (Newspaper) Moulon, Dominique, "Electronic Superhighway", Media Art Design, France, March 2016 (français). Terrific image and commentary Helen. Commenting on this page requires full PBase membership. The ‘electronic superhighway’ he spoke about was illustrated in a collaborative work with Dimitri Devyatkin, Media Shuttle: Moscow/New York (1978), in which the artists simulated a hypothetical future television channel through which people from New York and Moscow could communicate and see each other through satellite transmission. ’Electronic Superhighway’ takes its name from one of its contributors - South Korean video artist Nam June Paik, who coined the term in 1977. (Website) However, whereas the highways facilitated the transportation of people and goods from coast to coast, the neon lights suggest that what unifies us now is not so much transportation, but electronic communication. The Electronic Superhighway is a large installation, constructed with Thank you for showing us this and providing the background information. Thanks to the screens of televisions and of the home computers that became popular in the 1990s, as well as the cables of the internet (which transmit information as light), most of us can access the same information at anytime and from any place. , which has been housed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum since 2002, has therefore become an icon of America in the information age. Following the example of Cage’s oeuvre, many of Paik’s Fluxus works undermined accepted notions of musical composition or performance. Paik envisioned a different television, a "global groove" of artists' expressions seen as part of an "electronic superhighway" that would be open and free to everyone.The multiple forms of video that Paik developed can be interpreted as an expression of an open medium able to flourish and grow through the imagination and participation of communities and individuals from around the world. By the 1990s, Paik’s concept of an information “superhighway” had become associated with a new “world wide web” of electronic communication then emerging—just as he had predicted. It is associated with United States Senator and later Vice-President Al Gore. V. You could spend a very long time just trying to absorb the details of it. Nam June Paik: The Artist Who Invented Video Art Transcript. Yet, the piece also contrasts from the physical interstate highway, portraying the modern media world and how it now bridges the country through technology. ***** In 1965, he began collaborating with cellist Charlotte Moorman, who would wear and perform Paik’s TV sculptures for many years; he also had a one-man show at the 57th Street Galeria Bonino, in which he exhibited modified or “prepared” television sets that upset the traditional TV-watching experience. An amazing installation. Sep 21, 2018 - Electronic Superhighway is one of the most noted works of Korean Nam June Paik artist. His major works from this period include, (1974), a sculptural installation of TV sets scattered among live plants in a museum (image above), and. … Video installation "Electronic Superhighway" by Nam June Paik at Smithsonian American Art Museum. Cool! 49-channel closed circuit video installation, neon, steel and electronic components | approx. Fantastic, how an artist can sometimes express himself, about a certain theme, this is really successful, great work Helen BV, Highly unusual and elegantly captured. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from Electronic superhighway) The information superhighway or infobahn was a popular term used through the 1990s to refer to digital communication systems and the Internet telecommunications network. Jaune Quick-To-See Smith's, Contemporary Native American Architecture, Art, Race, and the Internet: Mendi + Keith Obadike’s, Mickalene Thomas on her Materials and Artistic Influences, Getting on the “Electronic Super Highway”. For the German Pavilion at the 1993 Venice Biennale, Paik produced a series of works about the relationship between Eastern and Western cultures, framed through the lens of Marco Polo; along with Hans Haacke, another artist representing Germany, Paik was awarded the prestigious Golden Lion. Here, Paik became the first artist to exhibit what would later become known as “video art” by scattering television sets across the floor of a room, thereby shifting our attention from the content on the screens to the sculptural forms of the sets. It illustrates how he interpreted a diverse nation through media technology. (1984), a broadcast program that coordinated live feeds from around the world via satellite. Key moments in the history of art and the Internet emerge as the exhibition travels back in time. Two years later, Paik revisited this work in, , placing over 300 TV screens into the overall formation of a map of the United States outlined in colored neon lights (see image at the top of the page and the detail below). According to an oft-cited story, on October 4th of that same year, Paik purchased the first commercially-available portable video system in America, the Sony Portapak, and immediately used it to record the arrival of Pope Paul VI at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Nam June Paik (Korean: 백남준; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a Korean American artist. Paik’s piece uses neon lights to portray the unifying superhighway of the 1990s and beyond, a superhighway made up of electronic communication rather than physical transportation. This is quite an impressive piece of art and your photo of it equally so. The different colors remind us that individual states still have distinct identities and cultures, even in today's information age. Electronic Superhighway: Continental US (1995). V, Beautiful image of this Electronic Superhighway, I never saw something like this. Nam June Paik, Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii. Impressive photo nice and smooth for your high ISO nicely delivered with nice sharpness and exposure. Today, the Internet and twenty-four-hour broadcasting tend to homogenize the customs and accents of what was once a more diverse nation. Topics It feels like an important new chapter in a very important wave of self aware art being disseminated … This is the currently selected item. The dual conceptual nature of Electronic Superhighway (representing both a prototype of ‘concept art’ and the conceptual principle of semiotics) in its message of America’s outrageous reliance on television, expressed through various video monitors, effectively intertwines culture, media, technology, and art, making Paik a truly interdisciplinary artist. The iconic ‘Afghan Girl,’ posted earlier. It is an enormous physical object that occupies a middle ground between the virtual reality of the media and the sprawling country beyond our doors. V, What an artistic presentation! While at the time, several brief analysis on more of his interesting works will be applied in order to explain a specific idea better. Very interesting. By the 1980s, Paik was building enormous, free-standing structures comprising dozens or even hundreds of TV screens, often organized into iconic shapes, as in the giant pyramid of. Electronic Superhighway is one of the most noted works of Korean Nam June Paik artist. For example, Iowa (where each presidential election cycle begins) plays old news footage of various candidates, while Kansas presents the. Morris, Jane, "Getting digi with it: How the art world is grappling with new media", The Art Newspaper, London, United Kingdom, October 2016 (english). This same irreverent spirit informed his use of television, to which he turned his attention in 1963 in his first one-man gallery show, “Exposition of Music—Electronic Television,” at the Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, Germany. He recognized the potential for people from all parts of the world to collaborate via media, and he knew that media would completely transform our lives. Getting on the “Electronic Super Highway” In 1974, artist Nam June Paik submitted a report to the Art Program of the Rockefeller Foundation, one of the first organizations to support artists working with new media, including television and video. Forty seven channel and closed circuit video installation with 313 monitors, neon, and steel structure; color, sound, approx. Text of 4 pages. In these and other projects, Paik’s goal was to reflect upon how we interact with technology, and to imagine new ways of doing so. All rights reserved. As television continued to evolve from the late 1960s onward, Paik explored ways to disrupt it from both inside and outside of the institutional frameworks of galleries, museums, and emerging experimental TV labs. It allowed artists to create moving images more quickly than recording on film (which required time for negatives to be developed), and unlike film, video could be edited in “real-time,” using devices that altered the video’s electronic signals. Please do not use or copy without written permission of owner. It is interesting history. Electronic Superhighway - constructed of 336 televisions, 50 DVD players, 3,750 feet of cable, and 575 feet of multicolored neon tubing - illustrates Paik's understanding of a diverse nation through the lens of media technology. Figure 13.72 Nam June Paik’s Electronic Superhighway is on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. . Text of 5 pages. Guardian Members are invited to a private view of the exhibition on 16 March. We believe that the brilliant histories of art belong to everyone, no matter their background. Paik augmented the flashing images ‘seen as though from a passing car’ with audio clips from The Wizard of Oz, Oklahoma, and other screen gems, suggesting that our picture of America has always been influenced by film and television. The many retrospectives of his work in recent decades, including one organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2012, speak to the increasing relevance of his ideas for contemporary art. A great image of this fascinating installation! Paik was the first to use the phrase "electronic superhighway," and this installation proposes that electronic media provide us with what we used to leave home to discover. John Hanhardt: The thing to remember about Nam June Paik is that he really imagined, and he realized, through his art and his ideas, this medium to become an artist's medium, an artist's tool. 15 x 40 x 4 ft. Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of the artist. SAAM media conservator Dan Finn explains all that goes into conserving Electronic Superhighway, a masterpiece by Nam June Paik that is constructed of 336 televisions, 50 DVD players, 3,750 feet of cable, and 575 feet of multicolored neon tubing. Exhibition: Electronic Superhighway (Whitechapel Gallery, 2016) Possibly the highlight of my visits, despite many other amazing work, because of its simplicity, humour and subtle way of expressing such idea. Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Earth’s Creation. I must get back there one of these days to re-visit the Smithsonian! While Paik’s work is generally described as celebrating the fact that the “electronic superhighway” allows us to communicate with and understand each other across traditional boundaries, this particular work also can be read as posing some difficult questions about how that technology is impacting culture. ~V, Very cool! All photos copyright © by Helen Betts. Roughly forty feet long and fifteen feet high, the work is a monumental record of the physical and also cultural contours of America: within each state, the screens display video clips that resonate with that state’s unique popular mythology. V, Great image of this fascinating installation. Cite this page as: Tina Rivers Ryan, "Nam June Paik, Young British Artists and art as commodity, Pictures Generation and postmodern photography, Featured | Art that brings U.S. history to life, At-Risk Cultural Heritage Education Series. ‘Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii’. 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