Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik (1932-2006) was a Korean-born artist and composer who worked in Germany, Japan and the United States. He trained as a pianist, wrote a thesis on Schoenberg in Tokyo and came to the avant-garde through new music, meeting John Cage at Darmstadt in 1958. A member of Fluxus from 1962, he is best known for turning television sets and video into material for art, in installations, performances and tapes. Nam June Paik was born in Seoul and studied in Tokyo and Munich before working at the WDR electronic music studio in Cologne, where Karlheinz Stockhausen also worked.