Nam June Paik
Monument: Family of Robots. Video technology as time machine

 
Abstract:
Nam June Paik’s experiments with television sets and video technology can be interpreted as an attempt to separate the television from the images it broadcasts. Paik transforms the televisions themselves – the monitors and their casings – into sculptures. The images or films step out of the frame of the appliance and lead lives of their own that are unconstrained by the fetters of time. The casings, which can be assigned on the basis of their style to a specific period (the time of their manufacture), disconnect themselves from the footage, which with its colour saturation and abstract nature belongs to a quite different epoch. Each work as an ensemble has a date of origin; the casings used, however, all date from the 1960s, resulting in a fracturing of perception and the creation of the impression of two layers of time that are drifting apart. For Nam June Paik, video technology is more than just a tool, because unlike a tool it possesses a virtual dimension. Video technology is much more akin to a factory or workshop; it is a place for transformation and for keeping things safe. In this place, things are translated into a code, where they are available for use in new operations, such as video synthesizing. The video recorder, a machine that is the virtual storage place for the transformed things, can portray space and time. Seen from the viewpoint of its inner structure, video technology can be regarded as a kind of time machine.