PROGRAM NOTATIONS FOR "SOFT TRANSFORMATIONS", AN EVENING WITH NAM JUNE PAIK, CHARLOTTE MOORMAN, KEN JACOBS, TAKAHIKO IIMURA AND OTHERS. FILMS BY JUD YALKUT AND IN COOPERATION WITH NAM JUNE PAIK.

VIDEOTAPE STUDY NO. 3: A film by Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut. One of a suite of continuing film studies into the filmic translation of the cathode-ray-tube generated images. Our objectives are: 1. Study of electronic images composed by purely electronic means directly on cathode ray screen, adapted mainly from the Bonino Gallery exhibition (BEGINNING of a collaboration) and, further experiments. 2. The introduction of metaphysics to cinema, aiming to deepen the ontological meaning, of monotony.

"My experimental TV is not always interesting, but not always uninteresting.; like nature which is beautiful, not because it changes beautifully, but simply because it changes," wrote Paik of his circuit modified and magnetically distorted TV "light machines" first shown in Germany in 1963,

"You cannot exclude anyone from TV", declared Paik, "so really delicate important subjects like politics, philosophy, sex, and avant garde activity are not shown. But videotape can supplant commercial broadcasting, with highly selective programming to be played back anytime at all. When you have a videotape recorder, you can make a videotape magazine. When you have a big screen 3-D color videotape recorder, it will kill LIFE Magazine just as LIFE killed COLLIER'S."

In "Videotape No. 3", the first videotape study on film, programmed images of Lyndon Johnson, Kosygin, John Lindsay and Fidel Castro reiterate gestures and movements and follow one another in a flowing television collage as images familiar to any contemporary consciousness, abstracted from any political connotation, images repeated and metamorphosed into abstraction. Popular images are thus transmuted beyond their popular meanings. Paradoxically, and because of viewer identification, such electronic and cinematic transformations may very well become more popular than related explorations into more abstract and metaphysical imagery.

Section 6 ASPEN No. 6A

Nam June Paik (14-11-67)

Most of my so-called "action music" pieces are not playable by other performers maybe not even by me now, because the past ten years changed my physiognomy and psychology.. may be for bad......... Joseph Beuys told me that America corrupted me, which I agree.....

Anyway this unplayability of uncorrupted pieces induced me to write several "playable (therefore a little corrupted) music" pieces, around 1962, and cut

I did not expect anybody playing it, but Joseph Byrd (a militant composer, who is no stranger to Judson Church) did it in U.C.L.A. I was quite embarressed and thus compelled to perform it by myself.

I changed the superficial forms of pianos and neck-tie of John Cage with various carpenter-tools in 1959 & 60. Newspapers were upset, walling them a "destruction". I chuckled,,,, Humanoid used to label some sort of changing forms as "destruction". and other kind of changing forms as "construction", where as according to a Newton's law it is same,... Cen-chu Chen-chu danced cheerfully on ajoyousmusic, when his beloved wife passed away.

But it does not mean that I was or am ashamed of being called a "Destruction artist"..... As a responsible realist, who would like to continue the responsible tradition coming from Shakepeare to Gorki, how can I avoid Sex and Violence if it exists,, , and if it exists in the surplus quantity ???

I am just relectant to endorse the superficial headlines of newspapers...... same thing goes also to my Opera Sextronique... I would like to call Charlotte Moorman rather a

       "top-FULL Cellist", although

although I consider my work necessary , her suffering important.

- - - - - - - - -

Critic left before the performance

          and

Photographer came after the performance...

    was my pain in vain ?

           ha  ha  ha

    surely I am corrupted

Original format: Two letter-sized sheets, printed on both sides.

Adapted for the web by Andrew Stafford.
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