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Nam June Paik, Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, 1995, fifty-one channel video installation (including one closed-circuit television feed), custom electronics, neon lighting, steel and wood; color, sound, Smithsonian American Art Museum, © Nam June Paik Estate, Gift of the artist, 2002.23
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Paik augmented the flashing images "seen as though from a passing car" with audio clips from The Wizard of Oz, Oklahoma, and other screen gems, suggesting that our picture of America has always been influenced by film and television. Today, the Internet and twenty-four-hour broadcasting tend to homogenize the customs and accents of what was once a more diverse nation. Paik was the first to use the phrase "electronic superhighway," and this installation proposes that electronic media provide us with what we used to leave home to discover. But Electronic Superhighway is real. It is an enormous physical object that occupies a middle ground between the virtual reality of the media and the sprawling country beyond our doors.
Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006
- Title
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Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii
- Artist
- Date
- 1995
- On View
- Dimensions
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approx. 15 x 40 x 4 ft.
- Copyright
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© Nam June Paik Estate
- Credit Line
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Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gift of the artist
- Mediums Description
- fifty-one channel video installation (including one closed-circuit television feed), custom electronics, neon lighting, steel and wood; color, sound
- Classifications
- Highlights
- Keywords
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- Object – written matter – map
- Object – furniture – television
- Landscape – United States
- Object Number
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2002.23
- Palette
- Linked Open Data
- Linked Open Data URI