In celebration of the 80th anniversary of the birth of Nam June Paik, the special exhibition ( 20 July 2012-20 January 2013) was gathering a spectrum of Paik and other contemporary artists who were directly or indirectly influenced by Paik’s innovation : Shinil Kim, Dan Graham, Lutz Dammbeck, Mary Bauermeister, Michael Snow, Valie Export, Bill Viola, Shigeko Kubota, Muntadas, Olfur Eliasson, Lee Bul, Catherine Ikam & Louis Fl. However, different from a conventional retrospective, the exhibition shed light on Paik’s thought as well as his art, with a thematic focus on “cybernetics.” Theory connecting various existing sciences, cybernetics was a great source of inspiration for Paik, who exploited boundary regions between and across diverse fields, such as art, technology and nature. This catalogue, therefore, can be a crucial documentation for understanding Paik’s philosophical background as well as cybernetic effect on art in general.
Beginning with the foreword of Wulf Herzogenrath, a specialist of media art, who organized several exhibitions with Paik, the catalogue reveals diverse aspects of Paik’s art, from the introduction which explains the origin of the mysterious exhibition title, to the following 7 chapters of sub themes, each of them were crystallized by the detailed work descriptions. Above all, this book is embracing not only cybernetic perspectives in art but also copious art historical information resulted from NJP Art Center’s accumulated research.