Paik-Abe Video Synthesizer
Date/ 1969/1972
Artist(Credit Line)/ Nam June Paik
Classification/ Object
N018_Paik-Abe Video Synthesizer
- Paik-Abe Video Synthesizer
- Homecoming
- 12 Piano Compositions for Nam June Paik by George Maciunas performer’s copy of score with annotations and instructions for performance at Nam June Paik Art Center in 2010 prepared and performed by Ben Patterson
- Message to Nam June Paik
- Chronicle of A Beautiful Dancer
- In Memoriam Geroge Maciunas
- Flux Reliquary
- Deck, A Fluxgame
- Closed on Monday, A Fluxgame
- Bead Puzzle
- Flux Rain Machine
- Events
- Living Fluxsculpture
- Instruction No.2
- Events
- Name kit
- Sinfonie Nr. 6 - in box (Violinparts and score), funkhaus köln, Neuss
- 2 1/2 TV
- Chair Black and White
- Colored Chair
- Hommage a John Cage
- 6 drawings on beertabs
- Fan
- MS-Fluxussus (symphonie Nr. 7)
- Cooking Pot (with Korean Recipe)
- First portable TV
- Untitled
Dimensions / 210x156x150cm
Medium / Device for Video Editing and Synthesizing
Paik wanted to move beyond manipulating a television so that two-way feedback is enabled, towards creating a machine that everyone ultimately can play with as if playing the piano. A materialization of this idea developed from 1964 is Paik-Abe Video Synthesizer, which was produced in collaboration with a Japanese engineer Shuya Abe in 1969 for the first time.
The machine is able to change the color and shape of video images input from such external sources as a camera on a real-time basis. The synthesizer was later used in Video Commune, a live broadcast on WGBH in Boston in 1970, and Media Shuttle – New York/Moscow, which was broadcasted on WNET in New York in 1977. No surviving editions of Paik-Abe Video Synthesizer produced in the early 1970s work properly today, whereupon the Nam June Paik Art Center worked together with Abe for ‘Abe Video Synthesizer Restoration Project’ in 2011, to recover the synthesizer’s functionality.
Medium / Device for Video Editing and Synthesizing
Paik wanted to move beyond manipulating a television so that two-way feedback is enabled, towards creating a machine that everyone ultimately can play with as if playing the piano. A materialization of this idea developed from 1964 is Paik-Abe Video Synthesizer, which was produced in collaboration with a Japanese engineer Shuya Abe in 1969 for the first time.
The machine is able to change the color and shape of video images input from such external sources as a camera on a real-time basis. The synthesizer was later used in Video Commune, a live broadcast on WGBH in Boston in 1970, and Media Shuttle – New York/Moscow, which was broadcasted on WNET in New York in 1977. No surviving editions of Paik-Abe Video Synthesizer produced in the early 1970s work properly today, whereupon the Nam June Paik Art Center worked together with Abe for ‘Abe Video Synthesizer Restoration Project’ in 2011, to recover the synthesizer’s functionality.
