LO 6: Random Access Music

by Nam Jun Paik

The 1963 installation “Random Access Music” by Nam Jun Paik consists of many strips of audiotape, containing found sounds, randomly arranged on a wall. In front of the wall is an open reel audio deck with the playback head detached so that the viewer can play the tape on the wall by moving the playback head along the strips of audiotape. Thus the viewer becomes the composer, changing the sound being played by how and where they move the playback head. The only explicitly random thing here is the arrangement of the audiotape, but the element of interactivity here takes the final product out of the control of the artist in much the same way that randomness does. The viewer doesn’t know what is on the tape so they have no way of making an informed decision on how to move the playback head, so the resulting sound that is played approaches randomness. I think this piece is a really cool early example of interactive artwork, and a creative use or mis-use of technology.

https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/9536