Yul Gok
Date/ 2001
Artist(Credit Line)/ Nam June Paik
Classification/ Sculpture
Dimensions / 165x189x48cm
Medium / Medium 4 CRT TVs, 4 radio’s cases, 3 LCD monitors, 1-channel video, color, silent
This is one of Paik’s video robots of Korean figures, which is a representation of the 16th century Confucian scholar and politician Yi I – his pen name is Yule Gok. His head is made with a monitor of an old vacuum tube television; his chest and belly contain monitors; and two ball-shaped antennae hang from his two arms. Rounded-edge radios are placed on both sides as two legs so that he looks like sitting his legs crossed.
The robot overall takes on a stable and well-balanced shape. Paik’s sense of sculpting is demonstrated in his use of the visual forms of components in the way suggestive of the robot’s bodily gesture and posture.
On the seven monitors, such videos as Korean fan dance are played back in a speedy and flashy way adding vitality to the whole work. The contents of the past like the figures in Korean history are rendered in the form of robot employing television and video. It may be said that, in representing historical figures through media technologies, Paik drew the past, present and future together.
Medium / Medium 4 CRT TVs, 4 radio’s cases, 3 LCD monitors, 1-channel video, color, silent
This is one of Paik’s video robots of Korean figures, which is a representation of the 16th century Confucian scholar and politician Yi I – his pen name is Yule Gok. His head is made with a monitor of an old vacuum tube television; his chest and belly contain monitors; and two ball-shaped antennae hang from his two arms. Rounded-edge radios are placed on both sides as two legs so that he looks like sitting his legs crossed.
The robot overall takes on a stable and well-balanced shape. Paik’s sense of sculpting is demonstrated in his use of the visual forms of components in the way suggestive of the robot’s bodily gesture and posture.
On the seven monitors, such videos as Korean fan dance are played back in a speedy and flashy way adding vitality to the whole work. The contents of the past like the figures in Korean history are rendered in the form of robot employing television and video. It may be said that, in representing historical figures through media technologies, Paik drew the past, present and future together.
