nam june paik

I spent all of Saturday in my house. It was convenient that I scheduled my day this way as it happened to be monsoon-ing outside. I woke up at 8:30 am, deep-cleaned the bathroom (it was...horrific), vacuumed the whole house, and then spent the entire afternoon working on job applications. This was all motivated by my itinerary for Sunday.

On Sunday, it was sunny and rather warm, and I met Sara for a lovely day of activities in downtown DC. We began our day by making a trip to the National Gallery of Art, where we

spent time at the Gauguin exhibit - fascinating, though I still think that Gaugin was an asshole for abandoning his wife and five children while he went and contracted syphilis in Tahiti - and we also went to the Nam June Paik installation and exhibit. I am embarrassed to say that I didn't actually know who he was before I went to see the exhibit, even though I had seen his piece "Electronic Superhighway" at the National Portrait Gallery with Sara, Co, and Steph in January 2010 when we all got together over the winter at Sara's house.

Mr. Paik was an incredible artist. He was born in Seoul, studied music in Japan, was a member of the Fluxus movement in Germany, and was the first video artist ever. He passed away in 2006 after spending the last decade of his life in a wheelchair, the left half of his body paralyzed from a stroke. He was revolutionary in the way in which he combined sound and images, with video art as his medium of choice. He made this incredible "TV Cello" that would show images as his artistic partner, Charlotte Moorman, played it. This was just one of his many pieces that incorporated televisions as the focal point; he also made TV chairs, TV bras, and many other things.

He also said the most amazing thing about technology and humanity, which I wanted to share with you:

"Our life is half natural and half technological. Half and half is good. You cannot deny that high-tech is progress. We need it for jobs. Yet if you make only high-tech, you make war. So we must have a strong human element to keep modesty and natural life."