Who created zen for 2k8/31/2023 ![]() Much as the lessons of Kelly’s book have not adequately been heeded, the efforts and insights proffered by Paik have not been sufficiently recognized. Although Paik was not working with AIs with a capacity for self-replication – and potentially self-determination – he was laying the groundwork for a time when technology might be able to meditate, cogitate, and even replace us. With Zen for TV and the work that followed, Paik anticipated Kelly’s investigation by seeking to discover directly what technology wanted, and what technology needed in order not to dehumanize us. Kelly’s book profoundly and prophetically examined technology as a force operating independently of the humans who invented it. In 2010, four years after Paik’s death, the technology writer Kevin Kelly published a book titled What Technology Wants. Nam June Paik, Merce / Digital, 1988 collection Roselyne Chroman Swig, San Francisco © Estate of. ![]() In the realm of practice, he was open to the Zen of Suzuki or Cage – and willing to acknowledge his own irreligious “reaction” – so why shouldn’t he be open to the Zen practiced by a TV? (Given that machines were bustling more than people, and hustling on people’s behalf, providing machines with a way to unwind was only humane.) On the religious premises of Zen, Paik was agnostic. What seems to have mattered to Paik was the fact that Zen, even more than music, appeared to be beyond the ken of machines – to be over their head – and yet machines appeared to need Zen even more than music, and certainly as much as the Americans practicing Buddhism as an escape from the hustle and bustle of life. Referencing Bach, Paik drew attention to the performative aspect of his work, and also implicitly asked whether a sonata for keyboard was for the harpsichord on which it was played. The musical comparison is apt, and not only because Cage was a composer. “I am not a follower of Zen, but I react to Zen in the same way as I react to Johann Sebastian Bach.’ ![]() “No, I am an artist,” Paik told an interviewer when asked about his practice in the year 2000. The latter question was addressed by Paik himself, who freely admitted that his interest in Buddhism was kindled years after he emigrated from Korea, inspired by his friend John Cage, an American who had studied under D.T. It would be fair to ask whether this is on the up-and-up, and whether it’s legitimately Zen. If there happens to be a human in the room, it’s of no concern to the machine (and shouldn’t even be a distraction if the machine is truly in a meditative state). Paik’s work with Zen was far more radical, because the technology is the recipient. At most, the work may reflexively critique the medium used to deliver the message. Conventional media art, which Paik also made, uses technology to provide a human audience with a novel experience, often immersive. This stands apart from the tradition of media and video art that Paik has often been said to have “fathered”.
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