Nam June Paik — Magnet TV

1965

Artists: Nam June Paik · Year: 1965 · Medium: Modified black-and-white television with large magnet on top · Substrate: Standard television set; high-powered magnet positioned on top of the cabinet to deform the electron beam · Place: New York, USA · Institution: Exhibited at the New School for Social Research, 1965; acquired by Whitney Museum Nam June Paik's Magnet TV (1965) is a black-and-white television set with a large U-shaped magnet sitting on top. The magnet distorts the electron beam inside the cathode-ray tube; instead of the broadcast image, the screen shows abstract, constantly-shifting light patterns — curves, blooms, interference forms — produced by the interaction of the CRT's raster scan and the magnet's field. The viewer can reposition the magnet to alter the patterns. The piece is simple, direct, and in some sense complete: no circuit modifications, no custom electronics, just a television and a magnet. Magnet TV is canonical because it demonstrates the core Paik proposition in one piece. Television is not a delivery mechanism; it is a material. The electron beam is not a neutral conveyor of images; it is a sculptable phenomenon. The viewer's relationship to the screen is not that of a consumer but of a participant who can interact with the apparatus. All of Paik's later video art — TV Garden, Good Morning Mr. Orwell, Global Groove — follows from this initial insight, which the Magnet TV makes in its most elemental form. The piece is held by the Whitney Museum, which acquired it early, and has been exhibited continuously since 1965. Paik's estate has authorized multiple variants with different television sets and magnets; the 1965 original remains the canonical instance. Lore Paik had been working with modified televisions since his first exhibition at Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, Germany in 1963 — Exposition of Music: Electronic Television, the show often cited as the founding event of video art. Magnet TV emerged from that earlier body of work, refined for a 1965 New School exhibition. The magnet Paik originally used was a scrap from an industrial junkyard; subsequent authorized realizations have used similar found industrial magnets. Sources • Whitney Museum of American Art — Magnet TV collection record • Hanhardt, John G. — The Worlds of Nam June Paik (Guggenheim, 2000) • Smithsonian American Art Museum — Paik archive