Artist Predicted Social Media Addiction 50 Years Ago

NOW HE TELLS US! –

Mar. 8, 2022 –

Audiences are consumers & subjects of mass media

As an internationally taught artist, Paik spent a considerable amount of time in various countries, observing the similarities and differences in everyday life. His worldview is shown most significantly in TV Buddha, one of his most iconic works from 1974. In this piece, an antique Buddha statue sits across a round television set that has an uncanny resemblance to an eyeball as it plays CCTV footage from a camera pointing back at the sculpture. As the visitor stands behind the Buddha to look at the installation, the artwork includes them in the CCTV footage, so they become both the viewer and the viewed image. Unusual iterations of technology had always been the core of Paik’s work, as seen in TV Garden, where he places TV sets among a bed of tropical plants.

Imagining a future landscape where technology can coexist with nature, Paik manufactures a world where both are in equilibrium, something that we’re still aspiring towards today.