Nam June Paik Exhibition at the Asia Society - Rose Chang-Crespo

              Nam June Paik, the founder of video art, united television and video technology with the body. He was one of the pioneers of the video movement who was fascinated with the manipulation of video imagery. His fascination began in 1965 when he purchased one of the first Sony Portapak video recorders, and he was interested in all aspects of video technology and even went ad fat as developing a video synthesizer. The Asia Society has a large exhibition dedicated to Paik’s work - including sixty of most well-known pieces including the “Golden Buddha” and the “family of robot”. The family of robots really caught my eye because they were larger than life and made of TV monitors and displays. The sign read that there were 9 unique sculptures which were created in 1986 and featured in The Art Institute of Chicago, but I only saw three from this collection of “family members”. There was the baby who was made of thirteen Samsung aluminum, color, silent Television monitors. The images and videos playing on these monitors were the clearest out of the three family members - images of children and babies living in poverty from different parts of the world flashed quickly. It was almost “glitch art” because there were images of small children living in poverty and then a globe would flash which would then turn into a heart and then an eye. It was a play on the eyes because while I tried to focus and see what was going on, another image would populate and I would lose track of what I was seeing.


           What really caught my eye from the three was the Father figure, he was the largest of them all and seemed the oldest and most worn out. While the baby’s monitors flashed images of famished children and poverty, the father’s eleven monitors seemed to be more of a flashing psychedelic pattern. It was hard to make out the images behind the patterns and what seemed to be planets. I spotted an RCR, Sentinel, and Motorola monitor which made up his body. These were vintage TV’s, radio casings and monitors. The mother was also made up of vintage TV & radio casings which were colored and silent. Her torso was different from the baby and the fathers, she looked slimmer and actually had a waist. Her torso was made up of a strange casing which held three small screens/monitors that was playing the NY1 news - and it was a live broadcast. I stood there and waited to see if they were stills from older news segments because the news all seemed to revolve around marijuana and illegal drug findings in NY, but then I realized the time and weather were accurate and then the news anchors came on - so the smaller TVs were tuned live. Paik is suggesting that technology is a product of human innovation and can be the reason of our withdrawal from reality — by adding human qualities to technology he is representing technology as a “means of resistance.” He felt it was the artist’s duty to reimagine technology in the service of art and culture.

Media 160 - Interview of Isabel Leo by Rose Crespo

Blog Assignment 2 - “What I Hear” in Jackson Heights

Rose Crespo

Blog Assignment 2 - “What I Hear” in Jackson Heights 

After spending an hour in Little India located in Jackson Heights, Queens without any means of communication or entertainment, I have heard and seen more about a neighborhood that I pass by every single day. At first I sat on a rock and tried to listen in on conversation that the people passing by were having, but there was so much commotion and noise that instead I tried to just take it all in at once. The texture was dense and thick as the 7 train (which is  came in and out of the station in the background. There is the jingling of the coins inside of a cup held by an older woman who is actually pretty well-known here and not welcome. After a while, the jingling almost becomes like a song - like the melody or chorus of a song and the people speeding through the street are her background instruments. The traditional Indian music coming from of the shops down the street is very specific and meaningful to this specific neighborhood. This street alone between Roosevelt and 37th ave is filled with an abundance of Indian restaurants, clothing shops that have colorful Saris on display and jewelry stores with a type of vibrant yellow gold that everyone is always shocked to see. 

I hear a lot of people speaking Bangladesh and in this particular area - the demographics of the men hanging out here are older men. As they raise their voices I start to notice who’s the “big shot” of the group and I eagerly want to know what they're talking about and why they're so excited about it as they raise their voices. The train is quite loud, but it’s far enough to not be distracting to the hustle and bustle of everyone getting out of the station and running towards their destination. Nobody is getting too loud, for this a pretty calm neighborhood, but there are a lot of playful kids running around creating a very hectic ambiance and dense texture. 

I grew up in this neighborhood so hearing people rush and push and huff and puff is pretty normal to me, but whats meaningful is hearing all of the different languages being spoken. I grew up in a very multi-cultural environment and sitting here and taking it all in makes me very proud to be from this area and it has made me who I am today. I have become open minded and just being able to distinguish languages apart from each other - gives me a lot of pride and joy. These colors and sounds and multi-cultural dynamics aren't available at everyone's disposable in NY even in Queens alone. So being a part of one of the worlds pst culturally diverse neighborhoods is amazing! It was hard to focus on one specific noise, but as people passed me closer and closer I was able to pick up their language differences, but overall they all unified eventually and just became one great big noise.