Did you know that the museum's widest artwork uses the most electricity?

Megatron / Matrix by Nam June Paik is 33 feet wide and is made of 215 video monitors.

This massive art work is one of "video visionary" Nam June Paik's most ambitious creations. Paik has been experimenting with ways to manipulate the television image since 1964, long before the advancements of computer video technology. In Megratron/Matrix, the 215 monitors show continually changing laser-disc images that are configured by several computers to create this dazzling video wall. Its grand scale and technological complexity demonstrate Nam June Paik's extraordinary capacity to move video from the sphere of the ordinary to the limitless realm of the imagination. Kaleidoscopic, unpredictable sequences of documentary images, invented cartoon vignettes, national flags, and giant birds migrate across the wall of video screens with mesmerizing effect.

Source: Jacquelyn Days Serwer. Permanent Gallery Installation (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1998).

Pictured: Nam June Paik (born 1932), Megatron / Matrix,1995, multimedia installation, about 11 x 33 x 4 ft., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by Mr. and Mrs. Barney A. Ebsworth, Nelson C. White, and the Lusita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment.