5 ms·

The Astonishing Prescience of Nam June Paik

103 points by zwischenzug 7y ago

mattdesl 7y ago
In regard to the author’s call for artwork: see ‘generative’ art and related communities including #plottertwitter. The realm of generative/interactive/media art is very strong these days, particularly thanks to accessible software like Processing and p5.js.
- person_of_color 7y ago
  I want to get into generative art but refuse to use Java. Options?
  - mattdesl 7y ago
    P5.js (JavaScript) is a good starting point.
    - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
      PlotDevice for Python on MacOS is good. If you specifically want something in-browser then P5.js will do the job. But I'm not sure why someone would "refuse to use Java". You don't have to deal directly with Java to use Processing or Quil/Clojure.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - iammyIP 7y ago
    C
  - bglazer 7y ago
    openFrameworks
  - andrewflnr 7y ago
    Anything capable of generating images? I've done generative graphics with Python and Julia. Don't overthink it.
  - trhway 7y ago
    >I want to get into generative art but refuse to use Java. there is no good art without suffering.
  - mmcwilliams 7y ago
    You can also write Processing sketches using their Python syntax[0], if that's your objection. Also as someone else has mentioned, openFrameworks is a great c++ alternative with an active community. [0] https://github.com/jdf/processing.py https://github.com/jdf/processing.py
zimpenfish 7y ago
Just taking the first one - "may have invented music sampling" in 1959. "Musique Concrete" was doing this in the 30s and 40s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_concrète https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_concrète (The rest of them seem to be not unreasonable claims though.)
- zwischenzug 7y ago
  Thanks! I did google around, but didn't come across this. I'll update the article.
- rst 7y ago
  The originality of the 1966 moving-dot graphics demo is likewise... overstated. Ivan Sutherland had done the first MacDraw-type program (Sketchpad) at MIT in 1962; the same year, undergrads at MIT playing around after hours did Spacewar, widely cited as the first video game. Those are also a far cry from a Pixar feature... but rather closer than Paik came later in the decade.
unameit 7y ago
correct me if i'm wrong but i find a lot of buddhism makes at least some sense in fields of highly advanced technology (like quantum physics). of course there's the obvious counterargument that any prediction or claim that's vague to an extent makes sense in a wide range of settings.
- FooHentai 7y ago
  In the same way other religions made a lot more sense when our scientific understanding of the world around us was less developed. Religion serves, in a large part, to answer questions for which there's not yet a formal answer. But that's more about getting the monkey off your back than it is accuracy. You can find comfort from following that path, but you won't get correctness or the ability to develop towards further more detailed discoveries.
  - tomasdore 7y ago
    Your second paragraph perhaps needs more justification? Religion seems to PUT questions: 1. Physical-world questions, the classic being, "if God is good and omnipotent, why does suffering exist?" 2. Moral-world questions, such as "who is my neighbour?", (and what are my duties towards my neighbour?). In your phrasing, we'd say that atheism 'serves to answer questions', by answering only: 1. All is randomness, we're here because we're here, etc. 2. None, unless you choose some duty, up to you, etc. These could hardly involve less thinking (for 1) or subsequent moral effort (for 2), so it's easy to see how 'you can find comfort from following that path'. Perhaps this explains their appeal!
    - evgen 7y ago
      I think the appeal comes from being able to accept reality without needing to hide behind a child’s fairy tale and to know that leading a moral life does not require the fear of an invisible sky god, but can arise from simply accepting that others around you are actually human beings deserving of the same respect and consideration that you yourself seek. This approach does lack the shallow judgements and easy rule following of a theistic life, but some find that objective reality forces them to walk a harder path.
dnpp123 7y ago
Anyone has a link for the FORTRAN video with the datadump ? could not find it on the broadband communication network.
- dajohnson89 7y ago
  *information superhighway
stefanix 7y ago
All the tech and theory was already out there. There was no shortage of visionaries. Take for example Engelbart's Mother of all Presentations (1968). Paik, like many artist showed that art and poetry is in that domain. In the early days there was alot of talk about abstract capabilities and not much concrete play.
- zwischenzug 7y ago
  Fair point, but it was more Paik's prescience about what this would do to society that I was interested in. One interesting thing about Paik is that he assumed we would all be more creative with these new media, but unfortunately we seem to have moved back to a 'centralised creativity' world just as before. I guess, as an artist, he assumed more people had his impulses?
  - wsy 7y ago
    > I guess, as an artist, he assumed more people had his impulses? I think this is part of the sixties zeitgeist: if people would be freed from capitalistic consumerism, there would be some kind of awakening, leading to a better society. One of Paik's famous quotes is: "Television has attacked us for a lifetime, now we fight back". The attitude to hope for everybody's creativity is also well aligned with Beuys posit: "Jeder Mensch ist ein Künstler" (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/beuys-joseph-beuys-every-man-is-an-artist-ar00704 https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/beuys-joseph-beuys-ever...).
somesortofsystm 7y ago
A lot of people predicted the Internet in the 60's and 70's. All you had to do was be an avid sci-fi reader. In fact, a lot of the world we take for granted today was predicted by sci-fi authors. Speculative fiction is how the horizon gets brought near.
- narag 7y ago
  Indeed. Return from the Stars by Stanisław Lem was published in 1961.
smelendez 7y ago
Another fascinating figure from that era is Chi-Tien Liu, whose shop CTL Electronics worked on the tech side of a lot of video art projects. The New York Times wrote about him at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/22/nyregion/video-art-conservation-ctl-electronics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/22/nyregion/video-art-conser... They now work on preserving many of these works, which often require CRTs and other now-vintage hardware. CTL's newsletter and other publications from that era, like Radical Software and Guerrilla Television, have a 2600-style mix of tech advice and social theory. Nam June Paik contributed to many of them. If you ever go to a museum and there is Nam June Paik exhibit on display, see if you can see the back. There are often interesting tidbits in the wiring and even sticky notes from him about how to set up and troubleshoot the art.

103 points by zwischenzug 7y ago

In regard to the author’s call for artwork: see ‘generative’ art and related communities including #plottertwitter. The realm of generative/interactive/media art is very strong these days, particularly thanks to accessible software like Processing and p5.js.

person_of_color 7y ago
I want to get into generative art but refuse to use Java. Options?
- mattdesl 7y ago
  P5.js (JavaScript) is a good starting point.
  - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
    PlotDevice for Python on MacOS is good. If you specifically want something in-browser then P5.js will do the job. But I'm not sure why someone would "refuse to use Java". You don't have to deal directly with Java to use Processing or Quil/Clojure.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- iammyIP 7y ago
  C
- bglazer 7y ago
  openFrameworks
- andrewflnr 7y ago
  Anything capable of generating images? I've done generative graphics with Python and Julia. Don't overthink it.
- trhway 7y ago
  >I want to get into generative art but refuse to use Java. there is no good art without suffering.
- mmcwilliams 7y ago
  You can also write Processing sketches using their Python syntax[0], if that's your objection. Also as someone else has mentioned, openFrameworks is a great c++ alternative with an active community. [0] https://github.com/jdf/processing.py https://github.com/jdf/processing.py

zimpenfish 7y ago

Just taking the first one - "may have invented music sampling" in 1959. "Musique Concrete" was doing this in the 30s and 40s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_concrète https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_concrète (The rest of them seem to be not unreasonable claims though.)

zwischenzug 7y ago
Thanks! I did google around, but didn't come across this. I'll update the article.
rst 7y ago
The originality of the 1966 moving-dot graphics demo is likewise... overstated. Ivan Sutherland had done the first MacDraw-type program (Sketchpad) at MIT in 1962; the same year, undergrads at MIT playing around after hours did Spacewar, widely cited as the first video game. Those are also a far cry from a Pixar feature... but rather closer than Paik came later in the decade.

unameit 7y ago

correct me if i'm wrong but i find a lot of buddhism makes at least some sense in fields of highly advanced technology (like quantum physics). of course there's the obvious counterargument that any prediction or claim that's vague to an extent makes sense in a wide range of settings.

FooHentai 7y ago
In the same way other religions made a lot more sense when our scientific understanding of the world around us was less developed. Religion serves, in a large part, to answer questions for which there's not yet a formal answer. But that's more about getting the monkey off your back than it is accuracy. You can find comfort from following that path, but you won't get correctness or the ability to develop towards further more detailed discoveries.
- tomasdore 7y ago
  Your second paragraph perhaps needs more justification? Religion seems to PUT questions: 1. Physical-world questions, the classic being, "if God is good and omnipotent, why does suffering exist?" 2. Moral-world questions, such as "who is my neighbour?", (and what are my duties towards my neighbour?). In your phrasing, we'd say that atheism 'serves to answer questions', by answering only: 1. All is randomness, we're here because we're here, etc. 2. None, unless you choose some duty, up to you, etc. These could hardly involve less thinking (for 1) or subsequent moral effort (for 2), so it's easy to see how 'you can find comfort from following that path'. Perhaps this explains their appeal!
  - evgen 7y ago
    I think the appeal comes from being able to accept reality without needing to hide behind a child’s fairy tale and to know that leading a moral life does not require the fear of an invisible sky god, but can arise from simply accepting that others around you are actually human beings deserving of the same respect and consideration that you yourself seek. This approach does lack the shallow judgements and easy rule following of a theistic life, but some find that objective reality forces them to walk a harder path.

dnpp123 7y ago

Anyone has a link for the FORTRAN video with the datadump ? could not find it on the broadband communication network.

dajohnson89 7y ago
*information superhighway

stefanix 7y ago

All the tech and theory was already out there. There was no shortage of visionaries. Take for example Engelbart's Mother of all Presentations (1968). Paik, like many artist showed that art and poetry is in that domain. In the early days there was alot of talk about abstract capabilities and not much concrete play.

zwischenzug 7y ago
Fair point, but it was more Paik's prescience about what this would do to society that I was interested in. One interesting thing about Paik is that he assumed we would all be more creative with these new media, but unfortunately we seem to have moved back to a 'centralised creativity' world just as before. I guess, as an artist, he assumed more people had his impulses?
- wsy 7y ago
  > I guess, as an artist, he assumed more people had his impulses? I think this is part of the sixties zeitgeist: if people would be freed from capitalistic consumerism, there would be some kind of awakening, leading to a better society. One of Paik's famous quotes is: "Television has attacked us for a lifetime, now we fight back". The attitude to hope for everybody's creativity is also well aligned with Beuys posit: "Jeder Mensch ist ein Künstler" (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/beuys-joseph-beuys-every-man-is-an-artist-ar00704 https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/beuys-joseph-beuys-ever...).

somesortofsystm 7y ago

A lot of people predicted the Internet in the 60's and 70's. All you had to do was be an avid sci-fi reader. In fact, a lot of the world we take for granted today was predicted by sci-fi authors. Speculative fiction is how the horizon gets brought near.

narag 7y ago
Indeed. Return from the Stars by Stanisław Lem was published in 1961.

smelendez 7y ago

Another fascinating figure from that era is Chi-Tien Liu, whose shop CTL Electronics worked on the tech side of a lot of video art projects. The New York Times wrote about him at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/22/nyregion/video-art-conservation-ctl-electronics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/22/nyregion/video-art-conser... They now work on preserving many of these works, which often require CRTs and other now-vintage hardware. CTL's newsletter and other publications from that era, like Radical Software and Guerrilla Television, have a 2600-style mix of tech advice and social theory. Nam June Paik contributed to many of them. If you ever go to a museum and there is Nam June Paik exhibit on display, see if you can see the back. There are often interesting tidbits in the wiring and even sticky notes from him about how to set up and troubleshoot the art.