Avant-Garde Procedural Art Week 3: Analysis of Nam June Paik's "Magnet TV" (1965)

“Magnet TV” is one of Nam June Paik’s first “prepared televisions,” which are a series of readymade televisions whose output is modified in real time using various physical instruments. In this one the TV’s output is altered using a magnet that generates a large enough force of attraction to overturn the TV circuit’s signals. By invalidating the TV’s image stream, at a time where TV enjoyed its peak of popularity, Nam June Paik attempted to take away from the populist medium’s conformist power, and establish video as an artistic medium, writing in 1969:

“This will enable us to shape the TV screen canvas as precisely as Leonardo, as freely as Picasso, as colorfully as Renoir, as profoundly as Mondrian, as violently as Pollock and as lyrically as Jasper Johns.”

Paik’s role as one of the founders of video art is well-established; less explored is his role in shaping today’s interactive art. Paik brought a sense interactivity into this new medium of video synthesizing that was previously only present in happenings and performances (of which he created numerous). By moving the coil in “Magnetic TV” around, one could easily transform the image in the work, an affordance that wasn’t there in visual art before.