Interactive Work: Random Access

RANDOM ACCESS | NAM JUNE PAIK

This is an interactive sound art installation by Nam June Paik, a Korean-American artist who was mainly concerned in creating video art and sound art. In this piece, he glued strips of pre-recorded audio tape onto the gallery wall. Visitors were invited to run a handheld playback head wired to speakers along these tapes in any direction and speed they wished to hear the audio in.

I could not find videos of the actual work, but here is an illustration of a similar interaction to that of the work:

This work was first exhibited in 1963, and I personally think it is a work so ahead of its time. 1963 was the year the cassette tape was developed and introduced to the public. In that context, Paik’s intention behind this work was to offer the viewer a refreshing way to experience the musical medium. With a commercially-bought cassette, listeners consume the audio from beginning to end, as dictated by the people who produced the tape. Through his work, Paik challenges this idea by unreeling the tape and exposing it bare. He gives the viewer greater autonomy in deciding how they listen to the audio (varying speeds and sequence), consequently presenting a linear medium in a non-linear fashion. 

While the work had a specific purpose back in the year it was made, I still find it remarkable and equally as valid as an artwork today. Society today is a media-filled one: we produce and consume media so rapidly and so intuitively. Living in this media-centric world today, when I study this work I am inspired by its ability to make us reflect upon the various stakeholders involved in producing and consuming media. It allows us to contemplate the nature of the consumer in the media today. Traditionally media was a one-way channel in which content was generated by powerful authorities such as the press and broadcasting companies, which was consumed by the general public, who had little say over how such content was made. But today, it seems that we have stepped into the role that Paik allowed his participants to play in his work: we have power over the media we consume, because we actively challenge it, critique it and even create it.

In my opinion, the interactivity of this work has allowed it to be a timeless art piece, something that will remain relevant and thought-provoking through the years. Interactivity is something that allows the viewer to become active players in art, and through their actions they are more immersed and present in experiencing and reading a piece of art. I think Paik’s work is a prime example of how interaction allows for greater and more varied possibilities in art experience, and hence be an entry point for discussion and contemplation about various issues and phenomenon that surround us.

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