Participation TV is an interactive video work in which a sound-frequency amplifier and two microphones are connected to a television.
When a microphone is used, the coloured lines in the middle of the TV screen warp according to the type and volume of noise made. Participation TV creates an aesthetic discourse out of television and the moving image, and transforms the relationship of the viewer to the medium. It demonstrates how interactions with new technologies can offer new visual experiences.
Nam June Paik is considered by many to be the father of video art.
He graduated from the University of Tokyo with a degree in History of Art and History of Music. Having written his thesis on Arnold Schonberg, Paik met and worked with influential composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage.
In the 1960s he became involved with the Neo-Dada group Fluxus, which had been inspired by the work of Cage.
Many of his works of this period involve music and performance, often in collaboration with cellist Charlotte Moorman.
In 1965 he bought one of the first portable video cameras, made by Sony, which he used to produce some of the earliest examples of video art.
Along with engineer Shuya Abe, he constructed a video synthesiser in the early 1970s. He exhibited widely, was given a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1982, and represented Germany at the 1993 Venice Biennale, along with Hans Haacke.
He also made many public works, including his media tower The More the Better at the Seoul Olympics in 1988.
