ON VIEW: NAM JUNE PAIK'S 'BECOMING ROBOT' AT ASIA SOCIETY
- 09/24/2014 by David Ebony (New York Observer)

In 1982, as part of a Nam June Paik performance in New York, a large metal robot/sculpture attempted to cross Madison Avenue. A hilarious documentary film made at the time shows Robot K-456 eventually getting hit by a car, but the automaton’s partly mangled skeleton continues to lumber down the street practically undeterred, even jaunty. It was entirely ahead of its time, as was its creator.

Paik, the late artist credited as the founder of video art, foretold the advent of personal computers, instant messaging and the proliferation of electronic media. He had a kind of contagious energy and an optimistic attitude toward the development of telecommunications or, his term, the “electronic superhighway” that inspired many.

What would he have said about the masses of people on subway platforms today staring with rapt attention at their smartphones? How would he have responded to the Google Age, with its Instagram, YouTube and iTunes devotees? These are the kinds of questions that come to mind while exploring “Nam June Paik: Becoming Robot,” an engaging survey of the artist’s work currently on view at New York’s Asia Society through January 4, 2015. A true techno-visionary, Paik died in 2006, age 73, just before the digital electronics phenomenon reached the feverish levels we know today.     

Read the rest at Observer.com

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