Year: 2012
Type: article
Abstract: K. O. Götz once said: "I made a number of experiments with cathode ray tubes in Norway 17 years ago.Funny images appeared, but unfortunately they could neither be controlled nor held on to."Held on to! . . .The words hit me like a bolt of lightning! 1 1 This is the composer Nam June Paik writing, and the year is 1963.The wartime radar experiments of the German painter Karl Otto Götz were recalled at the moment of the unveiling of an artistic invention Paik had developed in deep secrecy in a special atelier close to his usual Cologne studio: 2 twelve television sets whose internal circuits had been modified so that the transmitted images were truly out of control, subjected to the principles of indeterminacy that Paik had struggled in vain to realize through the then-available technologies of electronic composition.3 This was one of the first aesthetic celebrations of the peculiar speeds of television signals, a volatile audiovisual material that confronted artists with forces they could in a sense only submit to-in the way that made John Cage suggest one should learn to accept rather than control the world.4 All of a
Source: Critical Inquiry
DOI: 10.1086/668526
Author: Ina Blom
Language: English
Subfield: Visual Arts and Performing Arts
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2034774490