Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii

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, Gift of the artist, 2002.23, © Nam June Paik Estate
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, approx. 15404 ft., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 2002.23, © Nam June Paik Estate

Artwork Details

Title
Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii
Date
1995
Dimensions
approx. 15404 ft.
Copyright
© Nam June Paik Estate
Credit Line
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
Subjects
  • Landscape — United States
  • Object — written matter — map
  • Object — furniture — television
Object Number
2002.23

Artwork Description

Paik predicted, in 1965, that "someday artists will work with capacitors, resistors, and semiconductors as they work today with brushes, violins and junk." Over the decades, his own work stayed in constant conversation with how new technologies reshape the world. Electronic Superhighway playfully engages three such forces--the US interstate highway system, cable television, and the emergent internet of the 1990s.

In this TV map, neon-outlined states play a mix of borrowed and original footage. Each distinct channel reveals Paik's associations with or understanding of that state. Some video collages draw from personal connections, like Paik's recordings of longtime collaborator and cellist Charlotte Moorman filling the screens in her home state of Arkansas (along with images of then president Bill Clinton, also from Arkansas). Others incorporate existing media representations, with the movie musical Oklahoma! filling Oklahoma, and edits from a documentary on the 1950s Montgomery bus boycotts echoing from Alabama. A closed-circuit camera marks Washington, DC, where gallery visitors can see themselves in real time. This suggests the map is also a portrait, reflecting how media and mediation shape views of ourselves and each other at national, regional, and individual levels.

Audio Note: Synced television sounds match a handful of states' channels, so the audio spreads and blends across the length of the map. At different moments, various soundtracks become louder and dominate; at other times it is a noisy collage. The appropriated movie musicals--Oklahoma! in Oklahoma, Meet Me in St. Louis in Missouri, and The Wizard of Oz in Kansas--are each audible when standing nearby and as their songs reach a crescendo. Uniquely, the audio related to the Montgomery bus boycotts, which includes speeches by Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., plays through speakers on both sides of the map, not just near Alabama, making it the most prominent and legible part of the sound mix.

Works by this artist (1 item)

Ed Fries, Halo 2600, 2010, video game for Atari VCS, color, sound, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mike Mika and Ed Fries, 2013.73, © 2010, Ed Fries
Halo 2600
Date2010
video game for Atari VCS, color, sound
On view

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      Take a trip across the USA with Nam June Paik's Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii. Learn more about this iconic artwork that was a gift from the artist to the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM). Saisha Grayson, SAAM’s curator of time-based media, shares insights about Paik's life and the personal associations that, along with popular culture references, inform the media clips the artist included within this monumental map of the United States. Grayson also discusses the installation’s complexity and continued relevance today.
       
      This video is part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's ongoing series American Art Moments. Join a SAAM expert and go beyond the artwork label to discover the untold stories and rich connections represented in some of the museum's most iconic artworks.

       

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