NAM JUNE PAIK & BILL VIOLA.   Term Paper ID:24865 Click to get this paper

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Paper Abstract: Lives & careers of leading video artists. Paper Introduction: Two of the leading video artists who helped develop the form are Nam June Paik and Bill Viola. Nam June Paik is generally credited with starting the video art movement: A unique achievement is that of Nam June Paik, the Korean-American artist and musician who was in at the origin of Video Art and who, more than twenty-five years later, continues to dominate the scene with his varied and elaborate video sculptures, environments and installations, while he remains true to his Fluxus-inspired critical position. Bill Viola has been an important figure in the movement and has produced a number of important and challenging works using video as a medium. Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Such arearranging of images is free form the usual narrative and verbal elementsfound in conventional film and television: "His ultimate goal is totransmit his works, which he considers visual poems, into everyone's livingroom."[xii] Critics have noted the poetry that Viola embodies in his work: Distinguished by a confluence of allegorical resonance and virtuosic control of technology, his remarkable videotapes and installations have received international recognition. Maciunas was the founder of the Fluxusmovement, an anarchic association of artists who used their actions,exhibitions, compositions, and manifestoes to create a small rebellionagainst the institutions and trends of high culture. Bill Viola is one ofthe artists to follow his lead and to seek to express himself in this newmedium by using that medium itself as part of his message. He studied music andcomposition before the family moved to Hong Kong in 1949 because of theKorean War. He has pioneered the combination of straightor manipulated segments of broadcast TV with artist-produced videos in anorganization based on a complex mixture of image and sound.[vii] This iswhy critics can say that "no other artist is so closely identified with thefusion of art and technology."[viii] A retrospective at the San Jose Museum of Art in 1996 included anumber of Paik's major pieces, including Zen TV, Magnet TV, and Sonatinefor Goldfish along with an entirely new group of works collectively titledCybertown, one of Paik's largest efforts ever developed around a singulartheme: Cybertown is a witty, irreverently playful exploration of the revolution our society is currently experiencing as information systems undergo sweeping changes. and Catherine T. Art of the Electronic Age. In 1975,Viola became technical director of Art/Tapes/22, an artists' productionstudio in Florence, Italy. Nam June Paik is generally credited withstarting the video art movement: A unique achievement is that of Nam June Paik, the Korean-American artist and musician who was in at the origin of Video Art and who, more than twenty-five years later, continues to dominate the scene with his varied and elaborate video sculptures, environments and installations, while he remains true to his Fluxus-inspired critical position.[i]Bill Viola has been an important figure in the movement and has produced anumber of important and challenging works using video as a medium. In 1958, he attended the International Summer coursefor New Music in Darmstadt and met John Cage. Mary Lucier states the view that video is a conduit to humanconsciousness and memory, and a similar dynamic is seen in Bill Viola's"Video Black--The Mortality of the Image." Viola writes, [A thought] is more like a cloud than a rock, although its effects can be just as long lasting as a block of stone, and its aging subject to the similar processes of destructive erosion and constructive edification. Employing a rigorous structuralism, a ritualized investigation of visual and acoustic phenomena, illusion and reality, he achieves a poetic articulation of visionary transcendence.[xiii] They also note some of the influences that have shaped his aesthetic andhis specific view of the use of video in his art: For the last 25 years he has used innovative multi-media technologies to explore the phenomena of sense perception as a language of the body and avenue to self-knowledge. Like Paik, Viola startedworking with video because of an interest in music, and in 1973, he andseveral musicians formed the Composers Inside Electronics Group. It's the place where small-town America meets the information super highway--and a future where no one will have to leave their home for services or information.[ix]Robert C. Video art began making significant inroads in exhibitions andbroadcast television alike in 1969, with Paik leading the way by organizingprojects and exhibitions. In college,he was a major participant in the Synapse Video Center, one of the firstalternative media centers in New York State. This was a large exhibition occupying many rooms. In his work, Viola has integrated many disciplines and philosophies to present a broad view of contemporary art's relevance to the modern world, a view which has firm roots in the history of both Western and Eastern art.[xiv]The Eastern influence is evident in Viola's 1981 video Hatsu Yume, or"First Dream," using colored videotape with stereo sound to present whatseems to be a high-tech travelogue of modern Japan offering a contrast ofcity and country life: Woven throughout are partially buried symbolic references to his constant themes of the opposition and essential unity of fire and water, light and dark, life and death. He also receiveda John D. Morgan states of Paik's work, and of video art in general, Television could become a humanistic tool in the hands of the artist, a tool capable of transforming society --not toward an anti- intellectual cynicism or oppressive dictatorship, but toward new applications of interactive informational exchange, new horizons of cognition and purposeful speculation.[x] Bill Viola was born in 1951. The fusion ofart and technology that marks video art is part of a larger trend inperformance and exhibition art in recent decades. He graduated with a degree in aesthetics from the Universityof Tokyo. San Francisco: Bay Area Video Coalition, 199 .Hanhardt, John G. Hanhardt, Nam June Paik (New York: W.W. 1. Land is the death of fish-- Darkness is the death of man.[xv] Viola is one of a number of video artists who have also written abouttheir view of the meaning video art carries and the way it connects withthe audience. He attended the College of Visual andPerforming Arts at Syracuse University and graduated in 1973. Norton, 1982."Electronic Super Highway: Nam June Paik in the 9 's." (February 18, 1996), http://www.acoates.com/Paik.html."Nam June Paik." (1998), http://www.reed.edu/~jsones/research.html."Nam June Paik--Something Pacific." (June 26, 1996), http://gort.ucsd.edu/sj/stuart/paik/index.html.Popper, Frank. He continued this over the next seven years. Heperformed a number of theatrical music pieces over the next several years.He met George Maciunas in 1961. New York: W.W. Paik was involved inseveral Fluxus activities.[ii] Paik wrote a letter to John Cage in 1959, expressing his theoreticaland artistic interest in television as a medium. Endnotes Bibliography"Bill Viola." Electronic Arts Intermix (1997), http://www.eai.org/artists_info/indivibios_dir/bioViola.html."Bill Viola." Electronic Arts Intermix (1997), http://www.eai.org/artists_info/indivibios_dir/bioViola.html."Bill Viola--Video Art Pioneer at the Whitney." Culturefinder Newsletter (May 13, 1996), http://www.culturefinder.com/frsa.htm.Hall, Doug and Sally Jo Fifer. Duration is the medium which makes thought possible, therefore duration is to consciousness a slight is to the eye.[xvi] Nam June Paik was instrumental in developing video art as a form andin extending the range of video work into new areas. He produced a four-hour live broadcast for WGBH in 197 underthe title Video Commune, and he served that year as instructor in a programat the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles. New York: Harry N. He purchased thirteensecond-hand televisions in 1963 and held his first show of video art,"Exposition of Music--Electronic Television" at the Galerie Parnass inWuppertal. Paik premiered his TV Bra for Living Sculpture at the HowardWise Gallery and participated in a number of other performances andfestivals. Paik usedthe thirteen altered television sets, three prepared pianos, andnoisemakers: At the exhibition, Joseph Beuys improvised an action in which he attacked one of Paik's pianos with an axe. Nam June Paik. In his work, Paik oftencombines fast-paced video clips in high-energy montages programmed overseveral television monitors. Viola has received a number of awards for his work,including a United States/Japan Exchange Fellowship in 198 ; a RockefellerFoundation Fellowship in 1982; a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1985;the Polaroid Video Art Award in 1985; National Endowment for the Artsawards in 1978, 1983, 1986, and 1989; and the American Film Institute'sMaya Deren Award for Independent Film and Video in 1987. Two of the leading video artists who helped develop the form are NamJune Paik and Bill Viola. He continued toproduce exhibitions and extend the reach of video art.[iv] As noted, Paik was first drawn to the use of video in a musicalcontext, and "it was the random quality of the television soundtrack whichinitially appealed to him."[v] More than this, it was the very nature oftelevision which attracted him: Coming to video as an avant-garde musician influenced by John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, he saw television, with its low-brow reputation, as the perfect means by which to shock the Establishment.[vi]Paik has been an important spokesman for new uses of television technologyand for the relevance of television to art, using television sets insurprising ways for performances and in installations composed oftelevisions transformed into aquariums or stacked as pyramids. In 1956, he traveled to Germany and studied music at theUniversity of Munich. MacArthur Foundation Award in 1989. Norton, 1982),11.Ibid., 12.Ibid., 45-46."Nam June Paik--Something Pacific," (June 26, 1996),http://gort.ucsd.edu/sj/stuart/paik/index.html.Popper, 6 ."Nam June Paik--Something Pacific,"http://gort.ucsd.edu/sj/stuart/paik/index.html."Electronic Super Highway: Nam June Paik in the 9 's," (February18, 1996), http://www.acoates.com/Paik.html.Ibid., http://www.acoates.com/Paik.html."Nam June Paik," (1998),http://www.reed.edu/~jsones/research.html."Bill Viola -- Video Art Pioneer at the Whitney," CulturefinderNewsletter (May 13, 1996),http://www.culturefinder.com/frsa.htmPopper, 65."Bill Viola," Electronic Arts Intermix (1997),http://www.eai.org/artists_info/indivibios_dir/bioViola.html.Bill Viola: Independent Video Artist (February 19, 1996),http://www.xian.com/pr/cac96/bio_bv.html.Popper, 66.Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer, Illuminating Video (San Francisco:Bay Area Video Coalition, 199 ), 26.----------------------- 6 APBS program that year--The Medium Is the Medium--included Paik's ElectronicOpera No. From 1976 to 198 , Viola served as artist-in-residence at the Television Laboratory at WNET/Thirteen, New York, andafter 198 he served as artist-in-residence at the Sony Corporation,Atsugi, Japan. Nam June Paik was born in Korea in 1932. Abrams, 1993.-----------------------Frank Popper, Art of the Electronic Age (New York: Harry N.Abrams, 1993), 6 .John G. As he observes, "Video treats light like water--it becomes fluid on the video tube. He has alsocreated TV chairs and many versions of TV robots. I though water supports the fish as light supports man. Viola explores video's temporal and optical systems to metaphorically examine modes of perception and cognition, and ultimately chart a symbolic quest for self. Illuminating Video. Hisvideotapes and installations have been seen throughout the world, many inmajor group exhibitions at festivals and institutions dedicated to thepromotion of art.[xi] Viola produces video tapes and video installations at the same time,aiming to create audio-visual temporal compositions which collect sound andimages on videotape so they can then be rearranged and invested with astructure to represent the world on the basis of the artist's owperception, imagination, conscience, dreams, and memory. Hewas invited in 1969 to be artist-in-residence at the Experimental Workshopestablished by the Rockefeller foundation at Boston Public Television. He settled in cologne andworked at Westdeutsche Rundfunk's Studio for Electronic Music. This was the first exhibition of Paik's prepared televisions and marks the incorporation of this medium into his art making.[iii]Later that year, Paik went to Japan and met an electronics expert whointroduced him to Shuya Abe, and the two collaborated on ways to transformthe video image. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.

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