Artist Nam June Paik Predicted The Globalization Of Entertainment

The Korean wave of popular culture known as the Hallyu has introduced k-pop, k-drama and Korean film to every corner of the world. It’s an integral part of the globalization of entertainment, a possibility foreseen almost 50 years ago by Korean-American artist Nam June Paik. He predicted the Internet and how it might change entertainment—imagining options such as YouTube—that ultimately helped deliver k-media to worldwide audiences.

In 1974, Paik spoke about the possibility of an electronic superhighway that would not only connect the world, but foster artistic collaboration. While the first workable prototype for the Internet was developed in late 1960s, it wasn’t until 1993 that the web moved into the public domain. Now it is hard to imagine a world without such immediate connectivity and limitless options.

“We now live in a social media world where the circulation and manipulation of images and sounds are woven seamlessly into our daily, often nomadic lives,” said Rudolf Frieling, curator of media arts at SFMOMA, which currently houses an interactive and immersive exhibit of Paik’s work. “Our public can now embrace works like those of Paik’s with excitement and wonder precisely because we all have a different and much more intimate relationship to technology.”

Paik was a master of recycling and reinterpreting media. His famous work, TV Buddha, is a video installation in which a statue of Buddha views its own live image on a closed circuit TV. Another piece, Positive Egg, uses a series of video monitors to enlarge the image of an egg until it becomes unrecognizable. In Video Fish, a series of aquariums contain live fish and monitors showing video images of other fish. In Magnet TV, he used 17 black-and-white TV sets, altering the images that the sets project with magnetic rests.

“Magnet TV is one of his all-time classics and it’s so much more alive than anything you can imagine just by looking at its photographic representation in catalogues and academic accounts of media art,” said Frieling. “The electronic abstract form is not only a thing of beauty and complexity, it literally vibrates while standing perfectly still. And of course I love the idea that the beauty of the form is in stark contrast to the absolute crappy case it’s presented in. You need to look at all four sides to understand that Paik loved the worn-out, the rejected, the glitch, and the imperfect. Out of the ruins of an old TV he could conjure sheer magic just by moving a massive magnet and changing the internal magnetic field.”

Paik not only used television sets as electronic props in his artwork, but foresaw the future of global entertainment and was instrumental in helping to launch it.

On January 1, 1984, he aired Good Morning, Mr. Orwell, a program that aired entertainment from WNET New York, Centre Pompidou Paris, and South Korea. Viewers were delighted with the innovative offering. In 1986, he created the satellite program Bye Bye Kipling, including live events from Seoul, Tokyo, and New York.

Although some of his early contemporaries referred to him as a “cultural terrorist,” Paik is now known as the father of contemporary video art.

“All music videos go back to a number of different historic precedents, but his invention of this radical, non-narrative form of experimenting with music and visuals is arguably the most relevant,” said Frieling. “His first music video, from 1973, still acts as a blueprint for most contemporary artistic and commercial productions. And yet he is unparalleled in his fast-paced technique of collaging that became his signature style.”

While Frieling is not sure how Paik might react to commercial k-media productions topping international charts today, his art did set the stage for their global popularity.

“He was among the first to point to our global connectivity in and through media and he created opportunities for overcoming cultural and geographic borders in his art and in already existing formats,” said Frieling. “After all he did not invent television entertainment. It thus makes sense that he never promoted a national heritage, rather the opposite. He titled one of his satellite-transmissions Bye-bye Kipling to counter the famous phrase by Rudyard Kipling that ‘East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.’ His argument was for a profound culture of mixing, mash-ups in today’s language, where East and West do meet, an aesthetic that would also randomly mix the most diverse elements all in support of the creation of a gestalt, a holistic, subconscious effective way of reaching people’s senses beyond any national or formal traditions.”

Paik was among the first to show Japanese commercials of Pepsi Cola to an American audience in his first TV-productions – without subtitles.

“He would simply assume that one would ‘get the message’ without understanding the language as the message was really an international visual grammar of advertising in the first place.”

The at SFMOMA is the first major U.S. presentation of Nam June Paik in over 20 years, the first on the West Coast, and the only venue for this exhibition in the US. It runs through Oct. 3, 2021. The exhibition emphasizes his commitment to exploring the question “Why is it music?”

“The constant mix of sounds, noise, electronics, words and actions was all music in his ears,” said Frieling.

This story was originally published on forbes.com.