Interfaces for a Global Village: Nam June Paik, Marshall McLuhan, and the Future
Author: Lev Manovich
Publication: "Next 15 Minutes" exhibition catalog, Daejeon Museum of Art, South Korea, 2021.
From the article:
"If you had entered Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, Germany between March 11 and 20, 1963, you would have encountered something very unexpected. The exhibition included thirteen TV sets that were modified by the artist in different ways. Some of these TVs were connected to devices allowing visitors to make interactive abstract images by pressing a pedal or speaking into a microphone.
Seven TVs were receiving a television program. However, instead of displaying the program directly, they modified its visuals in real-time, creating new strange images. A TV creates the picture on its display via a beam of electrons. Instead of creating marks on some material surface like in painting or capturing the lens image on photographic film like in photography, a TV generates changing image by controlling the flow of electrons. Interfering with these controls as the artist did in this show resulted in particular dynamic images that had not been seen in art before. This exhibition entered art history as the first manifestation of what would soon be called 'video art’, and still later 'media art'..."