Robot K-456
Date/ 1964/1996
Artist(Credit Line)/ Nam June Paik
Classification/ Sculpture
Nam June Paik, Robot K-456
Nam June Paik, Robot K-456
Dimensions / 185×70×55cm
Medium / Electronic components, steel, aluminum, fabric, rubber, remote controller
First exhibited ’in the Second Annual New York Avant-Grade Festival’ in 1964, Robot K-456 is Paik’s first work that took a shape of robot. Produced in collaboration with Japanese engineers, this work was a 20-channel remote control robot, and it was named after Mozart’s Piano concerto no. 18 in B-flat, whose Kochel Catalog number is 456. It could walk around the street, play a recording of President John F. Kennedy’s speech, and drop peas as if to excrete. Robot K-456 participated in a number of performances with Paik. In 1982, this robot was set in motion again in an accident-performance as part of Paik’s retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where it was struck by a car while crossing a road. Paik called the performance as “the first catastrophe of the 21st century” trying to reveal the falsehood of mechanical rationality and propose a humanized machine that possesses human anxiety and emotion and experiences life and death.
Medium / Electronic components, steel, aluminum, fabric, rubber, remote controller
First exhibited ’in the Second Annual New York Avant-Grade Festival’ in 1964, Robot K-456 is Paik’s first work that took a shape of robot. Produced in collaboration with Japanese engineers, this work was a 20-channel remote control robot, and it was named after Mozart’s Piano concerto no. 18 in B-flat, whose Kochel Catalog number is 456. It could walk around the street, play a recording of President John F. Kennedy’s speech, and drop peas as if to excrete. Robot K-456 participated in a number of performances with Paik. In 1982, this robot was set in motion again in an accident-performance as part of Paik’s retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where it was struck by a car while crossing a road. Paik called the performance as “the first catastrophe of the 21st century” trying to reveal the falsehood of mechanical rationality and propose a humanized machine that possesses human anxiety and emotion and experiences life and death.
