
The Astonishing Prescience of Nam June Paik - zwischenzug
https://zwischenzugs.com/2020/01/04/the-astonishing-prescience-of-nam-june-paik/
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zimpenfish
Just taking the first one - "may have invented music sampling" in 1959.
"Musique Concrete" was doing this in the 30s and 40s.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_concrète](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_concrète)

(The rest of them seem to be not unreasonable claims though.)

~~~
rst
The originality of the 1966 moving-dot graphics demo is likewise...
overstated. Ivan Sutherland had done the first MacDraw-type program
(Sketchpad) at MIT in 1962; the same year, undergrads at MIT playing around
after hours did Spacewar, widely cited as the first video game. Those are also
a far cry from a Pixar feature... but rather closer than Paik came later in
the decade.

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smelendez
Another fascinating figure from that era is Chi-Tien Liu, whose shop CTL
Electronics worked on the tech side of a lot of video art projects. The New
York Times wrote about him at
[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/22/nyregion/video-art-
conser...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/22/nyregion/video-art-conservation-
ctl-electronics.html)

They now work on preserving many of these works, which often require CRTs and
other now-vintage hardware.

CTL's newsletter and other publications from that era, like Radical Software
and Guerrilla Television, have a 2600-style mix of tech advice and social
theory. Nam June Paik contributed to many of them.

If you ever go to a museum and there is Nam June Paik exhibit on display, see
if you can see the back. There are often interesting tidbits in the wiring and
even sticky notes from him about how to set up and troubleshoot the art.

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stefanix
All the tech and theory was already out there. There was no shortage of
visionaries. Take for example Engelbart's Mother of all Presentations (1968).
Paik, like many artist showed that art and poetry is in that domain. In the
early days there was alot of talk about abstract capabilities and not much
concrete play.

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zwischenzug
Fair point, but it was more Paik's prescience about what this would do to
society that I was interested in.

One interesting thing about Paik is that he assumed we would all be more
creative with these new media, but unfortunately we seem to have moved back to
a 'centralised creativity' world just as before. I guess, as an artist, he
assumed more people had his impulses?

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wsy
> I guess, as an artist, he assumed more people had his impulses?

I think this is part of the sixties zeitgeist: if people would be freed from
capitalistic consumerism, there would be some kind of awakening, leading to a
better society.

One of Paik's famous quotes is: "Television has attacked us for a lifetime,
now we fight back". The attitude to hope for everybody's creativity is also
well aligned with Beuys posit: "Jeder Mensch ist ein Künstler"
([https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/beuys-joseph-beuys-
ever...](https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/beuys-joseph-beuys-every-man-is-
an-artist-ar00704)).

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somesortofsystm
A lot of people predicted the Internet in the 60's and 70's.

All you had to do was be an avid sci-fi reader.

In fact, a lot of the world we take for granted today was predicted by sci-fi
authors. Speculative fiction is how the horizon gets brought near.

~~~
narag
Indeed. Return from the Stars by Stanisław Lem was published in 1961.

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dnpp123
Anyone has a link for the FORTRAN video with the datadump ? could not find it
on the broadband communication network.

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dajohnson89
*information superhighway

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mattdesl
In regard to the author’s call for artwork: see ‘generative’ art and related
communities including #plottertwitter.

The realm of generative/interactive/media art is very strong these days,
particularly thanks to accessible software like Processing and p5.js.

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person_of_color
I want to get into generative art but refuse to use Java. Options?

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mattdesl
P5.js (JavaScript) is a good starting point.

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TheOtherHobbes
PlotDevice for Python on MacOS is good.

If you specifically want something in-browser then P5.js will do the job.

But I'm not sure why someone would "refuse to use Java". You don't have to
deal directly with Java to use Processing or Quil/Clojure.

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unameit
correct me if i'm wrong but i find a lot of buddhism makes at least some sense
in fields of highly advanced technology (like quantum physics). of course
there's the obvious counterargument that any prediction or claim that's vague
to an extent makes sense in a wide range of settings.

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FooHentai
In the same way other religions made a lot more sense when our scientific
understanding of the world around us was less developed.

Religion serves, in a large part, to answer questions for which there's not
yet a formal answer. But that's more about getting the monkey off your back
than it is accuracy.

You can find comfort from following that path, but you won't get correctness
or the ability to develop towards further more detailed discoveries.

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tomasdore
Your second paragraph perhaps needs more justification? Religion seems to PUT
questions:

1\. Physical-world questions, the classic being, "if God is good and
omnipotent, why does suffering exist?"

2\. Moral-world questions, such as "who is my neighbour?", (and what are my
duties towards my neighbour?).

In your phrasing, we'd say that atheism 'serves to answer questions', by
answering only: 1\. All is randomness, we're here because we're here, etc. 2\.
None, unless you choose some duty, up to you, etc.

These could hardly involve less thinking (for 1) or subsequent moral effort
(for 2), so it's easy to see how 'you can find comfort from following that
path'. Perhaps this explains their appeal!

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evgen
I think the appeal comes from being able to accept reality without needing to
hide behind a child’s fairy tale and to know that leading a moral life does
not require the fear of an invisible sky god, but can arise from simply
accepting that others around you are actually human beings deserving of the
same respect and consideration that you yourself seek. This approach does lack
the shallow judgements and easy rule following of a theistic life, but some
find that objective reality forces them to walk a harder path.

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unkulunkulu
This thread starts out with buddhism, I’m not really knowledgeable in it, but
from what I gathered it is far less about rule following and fear than for
example christianity and more about guidance in the moral questions you
mention that an atheist should “figure out”, cultural objects also seem to
display respect and gratitude for an old leader rather than fear of some
omnipotent figure.

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cwzwarich
> from what I gathered it is far less about rule following and fear than for
> example christianity

That probably depends on which sect of Christianity you're talking about.
Protestants generally believe that one's actions do not actually cause one to
be saved; instead it is faith in Jesus alone that provides salvation. This
bothered people for the obvious reasons, with various attempts to walk back
the extreme antinomian interpretation, e.g. "one's actions demonstrate that he
has faith in salvation".

On the other hand, in Buddhism the escape from samsara is fundamentally tied
to one's actions, not simply one's thoughts or beliefs.

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unkulunkulu
What I feel about Buddhism is that it’s not about demonstration at all, i.e.
in case of Christianity (old testament) people are trying to get back god’s
trust or approval after expulsion. In case of Buddhism it is your choice to
get rid of the suffering and the teachings provide _a_ way.

