Nam June Paik (1932-2006)

120 television monitors appear like exotic blooms in a luxuriant garden of 600 plants. Nature, technology and art enter into a poetic union. The coloured pictorial treasure trove on the television screens is derived from the film composition Global Groove. In 1973 Paik, assisted by the Japanese designer Shuya Abe, created a synthesiser which could manipulate and transform existing film material. Instead of delivering banal everyday entertainment, the television takes on a creative role and invites the public to enter into the real space of a quasi-natural experience. In this artificial natural setting, technology provides humans with the basis for their own creative contemplation. With the acquisition of one of the three versions of the most famous multi-tv installations by the pioneer of video art, born in Korea in 1932, Paik has come a step closer to realising his wish to create an American, an Asian and a European version. ___