Daily Waypoint | N 38° 53′ 52.4″ W 77° 01′ 22.4″ Electronic Superhighway—Nam June Paik’s Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, 1995, fifty-one channel video installation (including one closed-circuit television feed), custom electronics, neon lighting, steel, and wood; color, sound. The installation was seen in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, a historic art museum located in Washington, D.C. commonly known as SAAM is part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world’s largest and most inclusive collections of American art, from the colonial period to the present. The museum has more than 7,000 artists represented in the collection. Located within the old Patent Office Building shared with the National Portrait Gallery. >>>FMG>>>> Like. Comment. Share! https://www.fmgphoto.com/Lifestyle/Architecture/i-R5BJ2b7 https://followingmygps.com/smithsonian-museums/ #ElectronicSuperhighway #NamJunePaik #SmithsonianAmericanArtMuseum #SAAM #WashingtonDC #Smithsonian #video #neon #color #American #museum #art #television #USA #artinstallation #DailyWaypoint #dailyphoto #sights #fmgphoto #followingmygps #fmg #fmgbear #photography #travel #lifestyle #LifeWellLived #travelmagazine #roadtripping #exploring #roadtrip (at Smithsonian American Art Museum - SAAM) https://www.instagram.com/p/B6r96GAFBkO/?igshid=11iewiw6y14vr
Whoa I love this 🤯 #art #neon #electronicsuperhighway #namjunepaik #smithsonianamericanartmuseum #museum #smithsonian #dc #washingtondc (at Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery)
Video installation, custom electronics, neon lighting, steel and wood, color, sound
at the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Electronic Superhighway reflects the expansive nature of the interstate highway system in the United States. Nam June Paik was amazed at the highway system in the U.S. that confronted him when he came here as a young adult. The huge country is represented by 336 televisions, 50 DVD players, 3,750 feet of cable, and 575 feet of multicolored neon tubing. Neon colors line each state, representing the unique nature of each state despite the homogeny that the highway system could entail. However, this homogeny is enforced as each state holds screens that represent how America is connected through the Internet and 24 hour broadcasting. So, not only is America connected by the interstate highway system, it is also connected by the internet and media. However, each state has different scenes playing on each screen, which implies that even though the country is connected by media, each state contributes to the diversity of the country as a whole by having their own identity.
Aristarkh Chernysher - loading - the Electronic Superhighway exhibition @whitechapelgallery Not much else grabbed my attention. Enjoyed it nonetheless. #art #exhibition #electronicsuperhighway
Exhibition ‘Electronic Superhighway (2016-1966)’ at Whitechapel gallery
29 Jan - 15 May 2016
Considering that the mass of information exchanged every year on the internet - about a zettabyte - represents a volume as large as the size of the Milky Way,
we can easily feel overwhelmed by the digital era. At Whitechapel gallery, 70 artists took over digital technologies and the internet to compose about a hundred of artworks, revealing a mixture of feelings, from excitement to fear, going through all kind of fantasies generated by this new virtual world.
The field of digital technologies has opened the door of a limitless world that has exceeded the current frontier of our comprehension of the world. It contains too much information that the physical and mental spaces, as we know so far, can apprehend. This idea is well represented in the artwork Internet Cache Self Portrait by Evan Roth, that shows a printed paper unrolling too much information that the wall, onto which it is pasted, can physically contain. Limitless, shapeless, the digital world is seen, by some other artists, as a sort of threatening monster, disturbing, strange, and sometimes quietly oppressive like the artwork of Addie Wagenknecht, Asymmetric Love, a chandelier-like with CCTV cameras’ installation which seems to be hovering over us.
Going beyond the fear of new technologies, other artists consider the possibilities of connection that they offer. Artists remind us that we have entered a new kind of reality where it is possible to connect with each other, quickly, even instantaneously, as shown in Alan Kaprow’s artwork, Hello, for instance. The artwork presents a set up of TV screens broadcasting black and white archival films that show a group of people apparently trying for the first time a live broadcast, and from which we could hear an expression that has become very popular nowadays: “Hello? Hello? Could you hear/see me?”. This simple sentence leads to a significant question: what is this new possible reality where we can be here, without being here?
In other artworks, the question is about the relationship between humans and computers: we can see some humans touching the screen, falling on the other side of the screen, taking part to the virtual reality. Sometimes the relationship seems to be unbalanced as if machines were too intrusive, or haunting, like this multiple screens installation by Nam June Paik, Internet Dream, which looks like a giant many-eyed monster… At some point, we can wonder if, instead of allowing humans to connect with each other, technologies are not meant to replace humans, like this hologram, Homo Sacer by James Bridle, that welcomes visitors at the entrance of the exhibition. Going even further, we can also wonder if digital life should be considered having an existence and along with the question, the question about gender arises too, like in Zach Blas’ Queer Technologies where it is possible to get gender changed using an adaptor.
The more we think about the virtual world and the real world, the more they seem intertwined and sometimes the frontier between them is blurred. Some artworks challenge us on the question whether or not it is possible to define what is real. If we look at Jennifer in Paradise by Constant Dullaart, a woman seated on a beach and depicted in images that are changing, depending on the perspective, it makes us wonder what is the original image or what is the true reality. And actually there may be no true reality, but just a question of perspective, which reminds us that all what we see is always a distorted image…
On a happier note, some of the artists have decided to give a more playful sense to digital technologies in their artworks. With Do You Have Work Tomorrow? Mahmoud Khaled plays with text messaging to create a story board that shows a funny dialogue between two people. Then, we wonder: could it be that frightening, if it could be humorous?
There are plenty of ways to explore digital technologies and the internet. We have pushed to open wide a door to whole new world. Shall we be scared of it or be excited about it? We cannot tell, but we can be sure that this virtual world and the possibilities it brings along are a great source of inspiration.
