# Nam June Paik [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nam_June_Paik) (1932–2006) ## Description Korean-American artist widely regarded as the founding figure of video art, moving from Fluxus performance and prepared-television sculpture into satellite broadcast works and, with engineer Shuya Abe, the Paik/Abe video synthesizer — one of the first tools built specifically for real-time video image manipulation. ## Key Tags #installation #fluxus #experimental-television #early-video #video-synthesis #feedback #robotics #sculpture ## Essential Works - [TV Buddha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nam_June_Paik) (1974) - closed-circuit sculpture placing a Buddha statue in perpetual video self-observation - [Global Groove](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Groove) (1973) - dense, image-processed broadcast collage prefiguring his vision of a global "video common market" - Paik/Abe Video Synthesizer (1969-70, with Shuya Abe) - one of the earliest purpose-built tools for live video image processing ## Details Trained as a musicologist and pianist in Tokyo and Germany before joining the Fluxus network around Cage and Stockhausen in the early 1960s, staging aggressive prepared-piano and object-destruction performances before turning to television as sculptural material. His 1974 Rockefeller Foundation report proposing an "electronic super highway" — a broadband network linking the world's cultures — anticipated the internet by decades. ### Concepts and Theories - [[Video Art]] - credited as the founding figure of video art as a distinct artistic medium ### Creative and Technical Practices %% none yet %% ### Collaborators - Charlotte Moorman - cellist and performance collaborator; *TV Bra for Living Sculpture* and other body-worn video works ### Institutional Affiliations and Associated Movements - Fluxus - early performance and object work grew out of his participation in the Fluxus network in the early 1960s ## References ### Primary Sources Bibliography %% none yet %% ### Secondary Sources Bibliography ### Cited In - [[Expanded Cinema]] (240 - Primary Sources) - Part Five, "Television as a Creative Medium," covers Paik's video synthesis and manipulation work.