Untitled 1975

This Untitled work by Nam June Paik shows four screen drawings done with ink on graph paper. Look at the tentative lines and marks made to describe what might be the inner workings of a television screen. I think of him, his hand hovering just above the page, plotting out some new world. Maybe he’s mapping out a kind of time-based drawing, a system that combines media, performance, and technology. What I love about these notations is how they make us think about how Paik visualized the unseen energies of communication technology. I bet he was thinking of what it means to capture something so ethereal and translate it into simple lines. This piece, like so much of Paik’s work, invites us to consider technology not as a cold, distant thing, but as a medium ripe for creative exploration, human connection, and new ways of seeing. It’s all connected!