Object Image

Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii

Paik predicted, in 1965, that "someday artists will work with capacitors, resistors, and semiconductors as they work today with brushes, violins and junk." Over the decades, his own work stayed in constant conversation with how new technologies reshape the world. Electronic Superhighway playfully engages three such forces--the US interstate highway system, cable television, and the emergent internet of the 1990s.

In this TV map, neon-outlined states play a mix of borrowed and original footage. Each distinct channel reveals Paik's associations with or understanding of that state. Some video collages draw from personal connections, like Paik's recordings of longtime collaborator and cellist Char...

1995
Fifty-one channel video installation (including one closed-circuit television feed), custom electronics, neon lighting, steel and wood; color, sound
180.0 x 480.0 x 48.0 in
2002.23
Text: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2024
Image: Nam June Paik Estate

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