|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Nam June Paik |
Piano Piece is a very unusual creation, which shows that today, art can be made out of almost anything! Nam June Paik, an artist from Korea (use an atlas to find this small Asian country), combined a piano, stool, television sets, video cameras, tripods, and a computer to create a sculpture that you can both see and hear! And it changes as you watch!
The piano is played by a computer program. The music you hear when you see the real work at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery was written by a composer named John Cage, whom Paik knew and admired. Cage died in 1992, and Paik created Piano Piece the following year as a kind of memorial or tribute.
Many different things go on at the same time on the thirteen monitors! On the top four in the center you see John Cage, who often did unusual things with pianos, as Paik has done in this work! On the two monitors in the top corners, and the one in the bottom center, you see three different things at various times. Sometimes you see hands (and even a head) playing the piano—they belong to Paik, who is a talented musician as well as an artist. You also see a dancer named Merce Cunningham, who often worked with Cage—he did new and different things with dance as Cage did with music. We don't know why Paik included images of babies as well. Do you have any ideas? The other six monitors show live pictures of the piano, recorded by the two video cameras on tripods. Paik said he wanted to create a "moving painting, with sound." Do you think he succeeded? Is this really a painting, or could you call it a sculpture as well? Or is it both? Can you think of a new name for this type of art?