Nam June Paik/The Residents

Nam June Paik was a true purveyor of originality. His avant-garde leanings and privileged upbringing that allowed him to play pianos by banging nails with a hammer and play violins by dragging them on the ground made for a lot of interesting imagery and concepts to how music is played. In his obituary in the New York Times, it was said that he grew up studying classical piano and more traditional music composition. It is truly fascinating to see how someone goes from interest in classical musical composition to the avant-garde. Also, his video installation of a giant magnet attached to the top of a television set was great in how it turned the television screen itself into a canvas for his art. In the video we saw in class, it was shown that he incorporated his discoveries in experimenting with the television into his video art; I remember seeing a video in which a woman is playing an instrument with the background consisting of jagged yellow lines.
I really enjoyed the works of the Residents that we saw in class. I thought "Harry the Head" was a very catchy little number and the accompanying video, which was said was part of a video game that the Residents were involved in, was fun to watch. The "One-Minute Videos" that we also saw was a clever spin on the pop song. It is true that the "ideal pop song" length is about 2 minutes and 50 seconds in length. Since most pop songs just repeat the proven formula of verse and chorus repeated ad nauseum, why not cut the fat and leave the core of it intact? It reminds me of the album "Pink Flag" by Wire, which also kept the songs at a short length with the intention of only keeping what is necessary for the song. It was also cool to see how the Residents embraced digital art in their work. The man with the crazy facial expressions having glowing tubes sticking out from him was an example of this and jump started the ubiquity of digital art in music videos for decades to come.