March 18, 2019 we took a field trip to the Whitney Museum to see the exhibit “Programmed: Rules Codes and Choreographies in Art, 1965 -2018.”
For me, the exhibit’s showstopper is Nam June Paik’s ‘Fin de Siecle II’, 1989. An audiovisual immersion with screens running the cycle of David Bowie to blue faces to naked women to prisms and other geometric shapes the 207 console televisions took me back to the 1980s.
I went back to look at the screens a number of times. I am someone that likes to have the tv or music on in the background whenever I’m doing tasks. Even if I have the television muted or paused, I like having it there. I always have, ever since I can remember. The old console televisions were the first tvs I remember having in my house. Eventually we graduated to the black box console look. So really, the whole piece of art reminded me of growing up in a way. Granted, I don’t remember ever having video with nudity playing on a loop however I never found the nudity in this piece to be overt or overly graphic. It somehow just fit. Perhaps it was the geometric nature of the video itself and its overlapping figures. It was just shapes.
Here’s a video about how the Whitney went about restoring it:
Other favorites included ‘Dance’ and ‘Code Profiles’. This video takes you through CodeProfiles so you can get a look at it from home!https://youtu.be/Hs8rDvC3GZg
Alina Learns to Code 