Nam June Paik

July 20, 1932 - January 29, 2006

1950: Paik (18) and his family have to flee from their home in Korea, during the Korean War.

He studies music history, art history and philosophy at the University of Tokyo, where he graduated with a dissertation on Arnold Schönberg.

1956: Paik goes to Germany to continue the study of music history. In Germany, where he met Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage, he began making electronic music. He then got involved with the neo-dada art movement, Fluxus.

1961: Nam June Paik, invité par le studio de musique expérimentale du Westdeutscher Rundfunk de Cologne, entreprend de faire des expériences avec des tubes cathodiques de téléviseur et avec les possibilités de modulation de l'image électronique.

1963: «Exposition of Music - Electronic Television» - Paik's first major exhibition was held from 11 to 20 March in a gallery (Gallerie Parnass) run by architect Rolf Jährling in his private residence. The show ran for ten days and opened for two hours daily between 7.30 and 9.30pm.

1964: Paik moves to New York, and begins working with classical cellist Charlotte Moorman.

1965: Paik starts to use the Portapak video recorded, introduced by Sony.

1969: with Shuya Abe, he builds the Paik-Abe Video Synthesizer during a residency at WGBH-TV in Boston.

January 8 1972: Paik writes the Binghamton letter to his friends at Radical Software.

1974: Paik (42) develops the idea of an "Electronic Superhighway" in his text "Media Planning for the Postindustrial Society"

1977: at Documenta 6 in Kassel, Paik participates in the first live international satellite telecast by artists, with Joseph Beuys and Douglas Davis.

1984: During the New Year's Day celebration in January 1, 1984, Paik aired Good Morning, Mr. Orwell, and other artists, Paik showed that George Orwell's Big Brother hadn't arrived.

1986: Paik creates the work Bye Bye Kipling, a tape that mixes live events from Seoul, South Korea, Tokyo, Japan and New York.

1995: Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii. "While Paik may have not had the full experience of 21st century cable television at the time, 1995’s “Electronic Superhighway” offers an eerie foresight into our video-obsessed culture, and confronts us directly with our modern malady."

2000: a retrospective of his work is held at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

"Long considered the pioneer of video art, Paik uses it to express the complexities of contemporary culture. Inspired by both the spirit of Zen and the ever-changing dynamics of American society, the artist has created a unique and expressive style of art that creatively fuses new technologies."

Sources:

an anthology of noise & electronic music, SUB ROSA SR190

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nam_June_Paik

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/exposition-of-music/

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