MEDA102 Assessment 1: Analogue coding- Nam June Paik 'Magnet TV', 1965
In contemporary media arts, there are many innovations that transform techniques and contingencies that influence creative invention to bring about change and innovation in our understanding of art through translation and transmission. To touch, to cause and to allow our body to interact with technology involves gaining a psychological sense to associate with media technology, where external objects and forces are generated by psychological translation (to think about a desired action) that is then transmitted via a physical action and movement as a code, engaging with media technology as a humanized form connecting the body and mind to the translation and transmission media and communication. Nam June Paik, a Korean media artist explored this idea. He is considered the founding member of video and screen based art, explored the idea of audience interaction to translate our psychological thought to then transmit into a physical action as code. Paik transformed media to challenge and influence our understanding of visual culture of what art can be, especially through audience interaction, exploring the technological contingencies of media technology. This experimentation is engaged within Magnet TV, 1965.
Paik’s practice developed from music and sound via fluxus to a visual media based practice. The television became the foundation for his media based works to explore its contingencies, using the television as a physical object and mass cultural object. Our understanding of social and cultural change cannot be achieved without knowing how media and technology work as an environment that media is an extension of the human being, whether physical or psychic, that is enhanced by human involvement. (McLuhan and Fiore, The Medium is the Message, 1967).
The way analog television sets work- the television screen is a cathode ray tube which produces a beam of cathode rays (or electrons) that hit the screen. By passing electrical currents through the copper wire coils within the television it becomes a magnet. The electrons firing from the back of the television and the produced electrical magnets through the current affect where the electrons will hit on the phosphor coated screen, hence an image is displayed on an analog television screen. When a powerful external magnet is brought near the television set, the beam of electrons in the television cathode picture ray tube is deflected caused by the magnetic field produced by the magnet, distorting where the electrons are going to hit on the screen, therefore creating randomized and abstracted imagery. Paik plays and experiments with this as a technological object experimenting with the human brain and action as a technology to translate the psychological desirable action into a physical transmission, encouraging audiences to use a psychological desire as a translation to transmit into a physical motion by moving the magnet to distort the imagery to change and experiment with the technical contingencies of the television set. Paik humanizes this technology through audience interaction, regarding this media's potential as an opportunity to not only use this as a sculpture or a painting, but as a means of global communication for art.
(Annotated photograph of the components of how an image is shown on analog televisions)
Paik draws upon the idea of separating the television from the network translation, transmission and distribution, using the television as a tool to paradoxically begin its existence as a media communication outlet independent from mainstream widespread media coverage. The viewer becomes a consumer when watching television, the viewer can select channels but cannot control. Paik challenges this notion by creating an experience for the viewer via interaction by alteration of television imagery using magnets, handing the control of the viewer back to the consumer. The audience is encouraged to use a powerful magnet to move around the television to physically distort the imagery into an abstraction to explore the television’s contingencies delving on the idea of an electronic painting via movement. A psychological translation converts the desirable actions of our brain to transmit into a physical action. For example, translating the thought on how to move the magnet to create an abstracted image to transmit into a physical action via moving the magnet and through this experience becoming familiar with its creative possibilities. In 1969, Paik wrote that he wanted "to shape the TV screen canvas as precisely as Leonardo, as freely as Picasso, as colourfully as Renoir, as profoundly as Mondrian, as violently as Pollock and as lyrically as Jasper Johns" (National Endowment for the Arts, n.d.)
Paik focused on conceptual image transmission and reception of video technology, separated from the moving image medium of cinema. Name June Paik viewed television technology as a social and documentation communication tool. Interactive systems i.e television, replace the conceptual systems based around center and hierarchy. The sender transmits the contents of the imagery to the receiver and that the transmitted contents of the television can be altered by the receivers using magnets. Paik explored new ways of viewing and engaging with media technology, what it could offer and what could be learned to expand the understanding of art and representation through implications of a revolutionary tool for visual communication.
Nam June Paik, Magnet TV, 1965
(Whitney Museum of American Art, 2016)
References:
Lovejoy, M. 1989, Second Edition: Postmodern Currents: Art and Artists in the Age of Electronic Media, Prentice Hall, New Jersey
Lee, S. K. and Rennert, S. 2010, Nam June Paik, Tate Publishing, New York
Prof. Sauter, J. 2011, A Touch of Code: Interactive Installations and Experiences, Gestaltin, Berlin
Sturken, M. 1984. TV as a Creative Medium: Howard Wise and Video Art, Afterimage, 11(10), pp.5-9
http://vasulka.org/archive/Publications/FormattedPublications/HowardAll.pdf
Jane, M. 1999, Competition Science Vision, Mahendra Jane, New Delhi https://books.google.com.au/books?id=J-gDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA1668&lpg=PA1668&dq=science+behind+distorting+tv+screens+with+magnets&source=bl&ots=C7y2fWAaqg&sig=ErjNZKdI_k2XWk2ZoC_ymJ3Qm80&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjX2t2ch77OAhXMjJQKHaBiDzYQ6AEIRDAG#v=onepage&q=science%20behind%20distorting%20tv%20screens%20with%20magnets&f=false
Law, J. 2016, MEDA102_Lecture 2_Machine Thinking, 4th August, Echo 360, viewed 18th August 2016 https://moodle.uowplatform.edu.au/blocks/echo360_echocenter/echocenter_frame.php?id=9925
Whitney Museum of American Art, 2016, Nam Jume Paik: Magnet TV, 1965, Whitey Museum of American Art, viewed 18th August 2016
http://collection.whitney.org/object/6139