Nam June Paik 's work coined the term Video Art which was seen as part of the movement and sharing it's ideologies. Paik and his work was often viewed as an imposter in art galleries in its formative years but due to the often sculptural nature of his early work he helped to path the way by combining a sculptural structure to his work that made it more gallery friendly. He famously said that this newfound medium would “enable us to shape the TV screen canvas as precisely as Leonardo, as freely as Picasso, as colourfully as Renoir.”
Some of his work is exceptionally sculptural and playful and he used TV screens to build, musical instruments, animals and robots from re-appropriated TV sets and screens creating both a message through the sculptures and the screens used to construct them. Whilst I love this type of work it is possibly not a style that I am intending to use on my Amen piece which i see as an installation. However with the drumming theme it may be worth considering if it would be possible to build a drum kit out of TV screens to show the work drawing inspiration form to Cello below.
His work can be multiple screen installations and often uses TV screens to force home the idea of viewing. His huge scale works are really impressive using a great multitude of screens all working to create images independently and as a whole. I really love these large scale works but maybe they may be a little ambitious for my current first installation work but are definitely something I would like to work towards.
His work can be multiple screen installations and often uses TV screens to force home the idea of viewing. His huge scale works are really impressive using a great multitude of screens all working to create images independently and as a whole. I really love these large scale works but maybe they may be a little ambitious for my current first installation work but are definitely something I would like to work towards.
His themes and techniques are many and varied and often appropriates distorted mass media, including newsreel, concert footage, and commercials. Nam June Paik is happy to borrow and appropriate from mainstream culture as well as high art and his work never lacks impact, power or a sense of humour. All of these are attributes I would like to pursue in my own pieces be they the Amen one or Anonymous.
Whilst the above all contain areas I can borrow from the main area of his work that interested me on my Amen Break piece is his audio works drawing heavily on appropriated and manipulated video imagery. Below in Videofilm Concert (1965) he creates a commentary mixing a huge variety of clips exploring of the interfacing of film and video. They are marked by a playful, irreverent sense of improvisation and experimentation and are a direct media intervention. Paik appropriates, distorts, manipulates and juxtaposes footage from a multitude of TV and video sources from TV adverts to someone practicing Yoga to TV adverts to comment on popular culture. Use of appropriated and re-contextualised distorted voice overs complete the effect.
To quote from Electrical Arts Intermix website the work is "richly inventive and ironic, these experiments form a link between Paik's performance and sculptural works of the 1950s and early 1960s and the celebrated video works and installations of later years".
In the clip from Global Groove (1973) below Paik is creatign a forerunner to the nasty music videos that started to crop up in the late 70s early 80's. Distorted imagery of dancers seems very passe now but were pioneering for the time a bit like us watching The Matrix bullet time for the first time. The distortion often subtle, strobing of the footage and the techniques used really creating something that is very visually interesting even if it is lo-tech by our standards. The bleeding of colours almost to an electronic watercolour look but then pulled sharply back into grainy video I especially loved.
I have been inspired by a lot of Paik's work and aim to take forward and play with some of the ideas gleaned from both his AV collages and structural works into my own pieces. Below are thew key points for consideration.
- Sculptural construction of drum kit (like cello) to show the clips of the artists. screens being bass, tom, toms, side drum, cymbals and high-hat?
- Appropriation as Paik did this to great effect and this spurs me on with my appropriation considerations.
- Use of colour and especially saturated TV colour to make images jump out of the screen at audiences.
- Bizarre appropriated VO. can this be applied to my own work or even use a VO?
- Abstract images created by effects alongside more identifiable images. Give a real texture and strong sense of visual style that I must consider.
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