multi media installation

June 26 - September 2, 2002

at Rockefeller Center
(Fifth Avenue & 50th Street)

This exhibition's centerpiece was Transmission, a 33-foot-tall authentic transmission tower made in collaboration with laser expert and creative technician Norman Ballard. During the day, the tower's rungs flashed with vivid neon lights. Every evening from dusk until midnight, a trio of red, green, and blue lasers beamed from the tip of the tower, bouncing off nearby mirrored surfaces to cast a colorful web around Rockefeller Center. In Paik's hands, the laser--which has been of interest to him since the late 1960s and has become the key element of his "post-video" work since the late 1990s--is more than a simple carrier of information. It is its own medium, carving visible lines and shapes into space and interacting with its physical surroundings.

Flanking Transmission at Rockefeller Center were sixteen cars from Paik's 32 cars for the 20th century: play Mozart's Requiem quietly. This array of classic automobiles represented the heyday of the American automotive industry, but it was a far cry from the traditional automobile trade show. Each car was painted silver, stripped of its engine, and filled with defunct audio-visual equipment. Near the cars one could hear Mozart's Requiem, the composer's final, unfinished work.

Artist Bio
Born in South Korea in 1932, Nam June Paik studied music composition at the University of Tokyo, where he wrote his thesis on Modernist composer Arnold Schoenberg. Paik has since created a vast array of installations, videotapes, global television productions, films, and performances. No other artist has had a greater influence in imagining and realizing the artistic potential of video and television than Paik. He has had mid-career retrospectives and major exhibitions at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2000); the Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (1991); the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1982); and more than 60 other international venues.
 
For more than twenty years, Paik has worked with laser expert Norman Ballard to explore and expand the possibilities of the laser as an artistic medium. Transmission joins their extensive body of collaborative work, which includes Jacob's Ladder at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (2000) and Baroque Laser in Münster, Germany (1995).

Sponsorship
Nam June Paik's Transmission at Rockefeller Center was presented by Cingular Wireless. Additional support was provided by TAC Americas.

32 cars for the 20th century: play Mozart's Requiem quietly is in the collection of the Samsung Foundation of Culture in Seoul, Korea.

Location
Rockefeller Center is located in mid-town Manhattan at Fifth Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets.

Other Public Art Fund projects at Rockefeller Center
Anish Kapoor
Jonathan Borofsky
Takashi Murakami
Jeff Koons