Nam June Paik is born on July 20, 1932, in Seoul, Korea. He is the third son and youngest child of a prosperous business family.
The term “cathode ray tube” is trademarked by RCA, though the product first became available as early as 1922.
The first commercially produced electronic TV sets containing cathode ray tubes are manufactured by Telefunken in Germany.
The first commercially produced electronic TV sets containing cathode ray tubes are manufactured by Telefunken in Germany.
Cable TV first becomes available in the United States.
Norbert Weiner, an American mathematician and philosopher, publishes Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, a seminal book that provides a theoretical foundation for the study of cybernetics and analog computing.
The first commercially available closed-circuit television (CCTV) system is released by Vericon, an American government contractor. CCTV was first used in 1942 by Siemens AG to observe the takeoff of V2 rockets in Nazi Germany. This and other early CCTV systems are not yet able to record and store information.
The Paik family moves to Hong Kong to escape the Korean War.
The Paik family moves to Tokyo, where Paik enrolls at Tokyo University to study music, art history, and aesthetics.
The Korean War—between the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)—officially commences on June 25 and continues until an armistice agreement is signed on July 27, 1953.
Color television sets are introduced to the United States. Due to high prices and the scarcity of television programs produced in color, the sets will not become popular in American homes until the mid-1960s.
The first American national color broadcast airs on January 1 with the Tournament of Roses Parade.
Paik graduates from Tokyo University in 1956 with a degree in aesthetics. The artist moves to Germany to continue his study of music with the composer Thrasybulos Georgiades at the University of Munich.
The first commercially successful videotape recorder is produced by the American electronics company Ampex. The product’s prohibitive retail price of $50,000 limits its customer base to large television networks.
Paik meets John Cage in Darmstadt, Germany. Cage would become a significant, lifelong influence and friend to the artist and a frequent collaborator.
The first working integrated circuit—now known as a microchip—is introduced on September 12 by Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments. Robert Noyce, cofounder of the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation (and Intel in 1968), concurrently develops a similar device out of silicon. These developments herald new possibilities in computer technology and lead to the eventual invention of the microprocessor.
The Jetsons, an animated sitcom, airs on September 23. It depicts a futuristic utopia in the year 2062 filled with robots, flying saucers, and whimsical technological inventions that improve everyday life.
The first home videotape recorder (VTR), called the Telcan, is produced by the Nottingham Electronic Valve Company and can be purchased in the United Kingdom for £60. The device uses a quarter-inch tape on a reel-to-reel system and can record up to twenty minutes of low-quality black-and-white television programming at a time. Philips and Sony also release commercial versions of the VTR at this time.
Paik’s first solo exhibition “Exposition of Music — Electronic Television” is organized by the Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, Germany. The exhibition features the artist’s first television experiments and marks his growing interest in using technology in his art practice.
The first commercial electronic desktop computer, the Programma 101, is launched by the Italian company Olivetti at the New York World’s Fair. It is the size of a typewriter, weighs 78 pounds, and can store approximately 240 bytes of information. It is widely considered the first personal computer.
Paik leaves Germany for Japan. His first robot, Robot K-456, is created in Tokyo with the assistance of Shuya Abe, an electronics engineer with a degree in physics and electrical engineering. The robot can walk, talk, and defecate. Later that year the artist moves to New York City, becomes an active member of the Fluxus group, and meets the cellist Charlotte Moorman, who becomes Paik’s primary collaborator.
The Video Home System (VHS), a consumer-grade analog videotape cassette that can record and store information, is developed by the Victor Company of Japan (JVC). This format would dominate the home video market until the advent of DVD disks in 2000.
The Sony Corporation releases the first home video-tape recorder (VTR) model CV-2000 in August for $695. It uses a half-inch-wide videotape on a reel-to-reel format. CV stands for “consumer video” and the device is also known as a Portapak because the machine is one-tenth the weight and cost of other analog video recorders on the market. A separate video camera, microphone, and tripod are also available as a “Video Camera Ensemble” known as the VCK-2000, which allows individuals to record, save, and play back original video footage.
Paik is granted a John D. Rockefeller 3rd Fund grant from the Rockefeller Foundation and uses the funds to purchase his first Sony videotape recorder, which enables him to record his own video footage.
The television show Lost in Space airs for the first time on September 15. It follows the adventures of a family chosen to colonize space in the year 1997, accompanied by an evil scientist and a robot. The robot has human characteristics such as the ability to laugh and feel sadness, as well as skills like singing and playing guitar.
In an essay later reproduced in the Flykingen Bulletin (Stockholm, 1967), Paik describes his idea for a “video telephone” through which “confidential pictures can be scanned with very complicated secret ‘coded’ frequencies and sent to the receiver. This will be useful (e.g., a Ford car designer showing his new car model to an executive ... via video telephone in complete confidence).”
On February 9, Charlotte Moorman is arrested at the Filmmakers’ Cinematheque in New York and charged with indecency for performing Paik’s Opera Sextronique nude.
In his report “Expanded Education for the Paper-less Society,” written during a residency at Stony Brook University, Paik predicts the use of computer and video technology to promote remote learning in place of traditional textbooks and educational tools. He also imagines a version of Facebook, writing, “In addition to the Year Book, the student body can make a short self introductory speech or act on videotape, which would run on TV in student restaurant or main corridor incessantly. The graduation book can be an electronic video disc ... which makes a big public university as intimate as a New England prep school.”
Paik and Shuya Abe debut the Paik-Abe Video Synthesizer during a residency at the public broadcasting station WGBH in Boston. The synthesizer is able to transform closed-circuit video broadcasts and prerecorded footage into video collages that range in appearance from realistic images to abstract patterns through new production and postproduction capabilities.
An early iteration of the Internet called the ARPANET allows multiple separate networks to be joined together into a larger network. The first exchange using what would become the ARPANET occurs on October 29 between the Network Measurement Center at UCLA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and the NLS system at SRI International in Menlo Park, California. Fifteen sites would be connected through the ARPANET by the end of 1971.
Paik creates TV Glasses, composed of a pair of eyeglasses outfitted with small TV monitors that broadcast video imagery. Forty-two years later, Google Glass, the first commercially viable optical head-mounted display, is debuted in 2013 and made available to the public in 2014.
Videocassette recorders (VCRs) are made available to the consumer market.
Global Groove, a video created by Paik in collaboration with John Godfrey, is a pastiche of found and original footage that explores the impact of new media on global communication. The video features effects created with the Paik-Abe Video Synthesizer and is considered a groundbreaking work within the history of video art.
A prototype of the first portable cellular phone is introduced by Motorola.
IBM develops a portable computer prototype called SCAMP (Special Computer, APL Machine Portable). In 1983 PC World designates it as “the world’s first personal computer.” Another seminal product created this year is the Xerox Alto. This user-friendly personal computer features a mouse and easy-to-use graphic software that would serve as the basis for Apple Computer’s Macintosh operating system.
In a report commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation, Nam June Paik coins the phrase “electronic superhighway,” referring to a broadband communication network similar in function to what is now widely known as the Internet.
NASA launches the first experimental Direct Broadcast satellite, named ATS-6, on May 30. The satellite is used for educational experiments and creates the possibility for direct broadcast television.
Paik collaborates on his first satellite telecast with the artists Joseph Beuys and Douglas Davis as part of Documenta 6. Paik marries Shigeko Kubota, a curator at the Anthology Film Archives. Kubota would later become a multimedia artist in her own right.
Apple is incorporated by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak on January 4.
Star Wars, an epic science fiction saga about galactic civil war, premieres on May 25. The movie features droids, robotic machines that possess artificial intelligence. Star Wars becomes the third highest-grossing film of all time worldwide.
The LaserDisc is made available to the public on December 15.
The Sony Walkman first becomes available to the public in Japan on July 1. The device is marketed as the world’s first low-cost portable stereo. It plays cassette tapes and features two headphone jacks so that two people could listen to the same music at the same time.
MTV, originally called Music Television, debuts on August 1. The cable station specializes in playing music videos selected by video jockeys, or VJs. The first music video shown on the station is for the song “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles.
IBM releases its first personal computer (PC) on August 12. By the end of 1982, the PC has become so popular that one is sold every minute of the business day.
The term Internet is first used to define how a network connects through Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP).
The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City mounts Paik’s first major solo museum exhibition, organized by John G. Hanhardt. On the occasion of the exhibition, Paik choreographed a performance titled First Accident of the Twenty-First Century, in which Robot K-456 was directed to walk cross 75th street where it was a struck by a car.
The first compact disc (CD) is manufactured by the Philips Company in Germany on August 17. Sony begins selling its first audio CD players on October 1.
Paik’s live program Good Morning Mr. Orwell is broadcast simultaneously from New York and Paris and transmitted to France, Germany, Korea, the Netherlands, and the United States on New Year’s Day. The event marks Paik’s first international satellite installation and is viewed by over 25 million people worldwide.
On January 24, Steve Jobs introduces the Macintosh 128K, the first mass-marketed personal computer featuring a graphical user interface and a mouse.
Paik creates the series Family of Robot.
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