Nam June Paik, Cybernetics and Machines at Play Susan (Su) Ballard University of Wollongong, [email protected]
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University of Wollongong Research Online Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts 2013 Nam June Paik, cybernetics and machines at play Susan (Su) Ballard University of Wollongong, [email protected] Publication Details Ballard, S. (2013). Nam June Paik, cybernetics and machines at play. In K. Cleland, L. Fisher and R. Harley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Symposium of Electronic Art (pp. 1-4). Sydney: ISEA. Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] Nam June Paik, cybernetics and machines at play Abstract Nam June Paik’s playful, imperfect and often ambiguous use of cybernetics has left na important legacy for contemporary media art. Paik’s works demonstrate that it is essential to temper aesthetics with ethics in order to question the utopian dreams of the very materials electronic artists work with. Paik’s works also suggest a new way to think about the machine in art. This paper focuses on the impacts of communication and control in the machine (and subsequently the network) in Paik’s Robot K- 456 and suggests a reconceptualization of Paik’s cybernetic machine as a machinic process enmeshed in communication systems. Keywords era2015 Disciplines Arts and Humanities | Law Publication Details Ballard, S. (2013). Nam June Paik, cybernetics and machines at play. In K. Cleland, L. Fisher and R. Harley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Symposium of Electronic Art (pp. 1-4). Sydney: ISEA. This conference paper is available at Research Online: http://ro.uow.edu.au/lhapapers/1026 NAM JUNE PAIK, machine with an emphasis on process Jump forward several years and in his CYBERNETICS AND and flow: machinic connectitivies. The 1998 commemorative lecture for the MACHINES AT PLAY machine as employed by both Paik and Kyoto Prize “Norbert Wiener and Dr. Susan Ballard, Faculty of Law, cybernetics shares much with Deleuze Marshall McLuhan: Communication Humanities and The Arts, University of and Guattari’s machinic. All three Revolution” Paik wrote that Wiener Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, approaches suggest that the machine “construct[ed] the technical interior of Australia when it intersects with art is not fixed the electronic age”[4]. In 1950 Wiener E-mail: [email protected] but dynamic, not isolated but networked. had famously defined cybernetics as the A close study of one work by Paik lays science of communication and control Abstract the ground for a definition of the art between humans and machines, and/ or Nam June Paik’s playful, imperfect and often machine as a machinic process generated machines and machines. The ambiguous use of cybernetics has left an within an ensemble of technical and relationships he described were more important legacy for contemporary media art. Paik’s works demonstrate that it is essential to social machines. than ones of simple stimulus and temper aesthetics with ethics in order to question response; they were circular and the utopian dreams of the very materials Part One: Cybernetic Systems occurred in a variety of environments electronic artists work with. Paik’s works also and Art through an assemblage of systems. suggest a new way to think about the machine in In 1965 at the New School in New York, Wiener identified systems as organic and art. This paper focuses on the impacts of in his first solo show in America, and artificial, human and non-human. communication and control in the machine (and subsequently the network) in Paik’s Robot K- amidst his electronic TV and colour TV Occupying the systems were machines. 456 and suggests a reconceptualization of Paik’s experiments, Paik presented one of many These machines used “sensory cybernetic machine as a machinic process performances by Robot K-456. members” to respond to and monitor enmeshed in communication systems. Rearticulating his works performed only feedback [5]. The slippage here is crucial a few years earlier in Wuppertal, to the way that artists in the 1960s and Keywords: Nam June Paik, Cybernetics, Systems, Art, Machine, Machinic Assemblage, Germany, Paik combined an 1970s developed concepts from Deleuze and Guattari, Norbert Wiener, Jack experimental music aesthetic with the cybernetics. If feedback was regulated Burnham technical and performative concerns of through sensory members, this could the new electronic media. He called the potentially mean that machines had There are many recurring figures in exhibition “Nam June Paik: Cybernetics ‘senses’ or equally, that humans and the histories of electronic art. Two of Art and Music” [2]. Paik was certainly other sensing beings were machines. The these form the focus of this paper. The not the only artist to be concerned with flux suggested between a human as a first is the figure of cybernetics: an idea the machines and systems of cybernetics machine and a machine as a human of systems and relationships of in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1971 artist presented fertile ground for imaginative communication and control pervasive Hans Haacke named a caged mynah bird couplings [6]. There was not a through science since the Second World after the founder of cybernetics Norbert straightforward one-to-one relation War, but never fully articulated as an Wiener. ‘Norbert’ the bird was trained to between art and science, human and non- independent discipline. The second speak the catch phrase, “All systems human, feedback and response. As figure is the maverick artist Nam June go!” Despite its failure to be realised, the systems themselves, art and cybernetics Paik, whose ongoing influence on work lives on as an evocative example of were infracted in each other. For contemporary electronic art and media is art’s engagement with real-life and real- example, in Paik’s TV Buddha (1974) evidenced in numerous critical essays time systems. Paik and Haake were and its multiple variations, a seemingly and exhibition catalogues [1]. Together humanising systems and technology. closed and meditative cybernetic system the historical concepts of cybernetics, Jack Burnham was one of a number of is interlaced by a viewer captured in the and art works by Nam June Paik, have curators who connected this kind of process of observation. In this and other influenced how electronic art is systems thinking directly with art works Paik extended possibilities within conceptualised today. This paper seeks practice. Burnham looked for ways to which the relationship between human to reveal why this is the case by tracing a further open up the properties of the art and machine became more than one of third figure: the machine. The figure of object to relationships of time, control, feedback; it became systemic and the machine contains differing meanings biology and communication, writing: aesthetic. in the way that it has been employed “While the system is a fundamental Cybernetics grew out of a need to within cybernetics and by Paik. concept of cybernetics, its value as understand and map complexity and Machines in cybernetics are an artistic idea lies in its power to organisation, both social and biological. operations and systems of relationships. cope with kinetic situations, and When moved into art, it did so in very Machines for Paik were expanded particularly the connecting structures narrow and specific ways. In 1968 and playful beings that were simultaneously of evolving events.”[3] 1970 two exhibitions across two major constructed objects and temporary centres of art production further tested networks. The difference between the Burnham realised that Norbert Wiener’s the boundary regions between the concept of the machine within description of cybernetic systems as science of cybernetics and the practices cybernetics and Paik’s machines suggest evolving relational events tempered by of art. Jasia Reichardt’s Cybernetic a call and response between the machine feedback, offered a challenging concept Serendipity at the ICA in London and and the broad field of the machinic. The by which art could inhabit new Burnham’s Software, Information machinic is a concept attributed to the environments, new machines and new Technology: Its New Meaning for Art at philosophers Deleuze and Guattari by materials. At this moment cybernetics the Jewish Museum in New York, were which they counter what they understand and ecologies were considered propositional, asking in what ways to be the stability and striations of the interchangeable. aesthetics and technology could be "(&'%%)&-+,.'( %%)!#!! #* ! #&#' ! -+,.! #"$$# # ##$$-,-.$2/10 ,# considered together. Relationships of learn to play a Paik TV, you are forced transform the bodies and machines communication and control pointed to see these patterns of technology in involved. Highlighting one of his key towards a shared place for humans, terms that are different from those you influences, Felix Guattari comments that objects, and machines. Although they learned in physics”[10]. Francisco Varela “characterise[s] a had quite different agendas, together Key here is that despite his reflections machine by ‘the set of inter-relations of these early exhibitions suggested a future on their work, Paik’s machines are not its components independent of the for relationships between art and the same as those described by McLuhan components themselves’”[16]. cybernetics, and prefigured an artworld or Wiener. Nor do they offer a Following Deleuze and Guattari’s that would become concerned with straightforward illustration of emphasis on open reformation of ethical and ecological relations between Reichardt’s or Burnham’s concerns. assemblages, the cybernated artwork can human and non-human entities. Humans, Bauman and the others who engaged thus be understood as a machinic objects and machines were seen to enter with Paik’s electronic and magnetic assemblage formed through transforming into new kinds of relationships. Echoing manipulations, suggest that they offer a sets of inter-related components (both the discourses of first order cybernetics very specific experience.