Nam June Paik and Wolf Vostell

TV Garden

Electronic Dé-coll/age

I found Paik’s TV Garden intriguing because I say it as a future prediction of what the worlds was going to be like today. With every year comes the mentality that we want the next best thing, the top of the line as far as technology gets better and better. But we just throw away last year’s model. Creating huge stockpiles of old technology. I feel TV Garden is representative of that, it is reminiscent of a TV graveyard/ junkyard with years of overgrowth because it gets overlooked by the public and viewed as worthless.

            Vostell’s Electronic Decollage was chaotic. There was so much going on at once. Which I believe was the point he was trying to convey. Just as the TV industry started to create shows and programs they were distractions from what was really going on in the world. Just as these monstrosities of TV robot collages distract you from the screen that you are trying to view.

Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (Questions)

1) What is the purpose of the televisions besides it being a distraction from our daily lives? Is there a power structure built with advertisement and also television as a whole? Who is reaping the benefits?

2) Televisions just begin to keep getting better in quality. Is there going to be a time where 

Televisions are so in depth that those static images become reality? And if those images on the 

screen get more color or frame rate improves how that effect the way we see the world as a whole will?

Presentation 1

       
                                                 


                                                           http://www.basjanader.com/

Bas Jan Ader was one of the early pioneers of experimental filmmaking. He often used his on body and the prop in which he filmed. His films depicted himself testing out human limits. One such film was of himself climbing up a tree and hanging on a branch until his hands failed to hold on entirely and he dropped into a creek. Ader used gravity as his medium often letting his body be the form at which we was able to represent gravity best. He did several films of himself falling as well as filming the smashing of lightbulbs via a falling rock. His use of his body is oddly reminiscent of the likes of Jackass now a days and other viral reality TV that pushed one’s body to the limits of pain. He disappeared during his last art performance as her tried to sail by himself across the Atlantic Ocean.