Nam June Paik

Internet Dream, 1994

Video sculpture

On loan from ZKM Center for Art and Media.

“Television has attacked us for a lifetime, now we fight back.”

About the work

Nam June Paik intentionally disrupts transmission, creating an information overload where signal collides with noise. Internet Dream subverts a one-way medium –the television– replacing clarity with chaos and linearity with unpredictability. Paik foresaw an 'Electronic Superhighway' where technologies would connect to global networks and predicted that the internet would be more complex and erratic than the utopian picture of free-flowing information that emerged in the 1990s. Internet Dream suggests that noise is not just a byproduct of technology but a medium itself that shapes and distorts human perception.

About the artist

Nam June Paik (1932–2006) was a Korean-American artist, widely regarded as the ‘father of video art.’ He anticipated many of the technological advancements and their social and cultural impacts that would come to define the digital age. Paik famously declared, “the future is now,” and was instrumental in establishing video art as a genre. Known for iconic works like TV Buddha and Electronics Superhighway, Paik used television and video as mediums to explore themes of global connectivity and the evolving relationship between humans and technology.