Who is the practitioner (what is their name?) and when were they practicing?
Nam June Paik (1932–2006) was a Korean American artist that specialized in analogue video art installations. He practiced this starting from around 1962 until his death in 2006. (Nam June Paik | Gagosian, 2020)
What is the title of the photo or video you have chosen to analyze (can you provide a link?)
The video I have chosen was titled ‘Global Groove’.
With the photo or video, you are examining when was it produced (date)?
The video was created by Nam June Park in collaboration with John J. Godfrey in 1973.
How was the photo or video authored?
The video features primarily a man and a woman dancing to the music being played while layering the video with excerpts from his own older works, other tv programs, and footage from other fellow video artists such as Jud Yalkut and Robert Breer. (Media Art Net, 2020) The original footage was also layered and multiplied on itself and highly colour saturated at different points to create a surrealist image. (Beyler, 2020) The footage additionally included a voiceover at the beginning of the video of a television presenter describing the clip as ‘a glimpse of the video landscape of tomorrow’. (Global Grove, 1973) This presents the video as an amalgamation of the current and past media to create an entirely new image and message.
How was the photo or video published?
The video itself was broadcasted by WNET-TV on 30 January 1974. (Media Art Net, 2020) the video was also then included in a variety of Paik’s other installations, such as his piece ‘TV Garden’ in the same year (1974) showing the video playing on a variety of analogue television screens surrounded by plant life in a room. (TV Garden, 2020) It is hard to find information about where else te film was published but suffice to say it was thoroughly present in some of Paik’s other art installations
How was the photo or video distributed?
With the internet not existing yet, the film was only able to be presented at the time through these art installations or perhaps cable television. Thus people that would have seen the footage would have been art goers that became immersed in Paik’s installations. The film itself did receive its own art installation in New York, 2004 for a time (Global Groove 2004, 2020), showing the footage through various projections and screens on the walls of a room. The installations are also shown around the world these days allowing many others to also view the footage in the context of Paik’s installations. (Global Groove 2004, 2020) Additionally, small clips of the footage are now available online as well to view.
References
Gagosian. 2020. Nam June Paik | Gagosian. [online] Available at:
Guggenheim. 2020. TV Garden. [online] Available at:
Guggenheim. 2020. Global Groove 2004. [online] Available at:
Medienkunstnetz.de. 2020. Media Art Net | Paik, Nam June: Global Groove. [online] Available at:
Beyler, T., 2020. Nam June Paik / Global Groove. [online] Newmedia-art.org. Available at:
Global Grove. 1973. Directed by N. June Paik and J. Godfrey.