Performance

What is an Instrument?

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MyFi Studio is performing for Nam June Paik: The Miami Years exhibition as the first of two Notations, performances by contemporary artists whose practices engage with and further the experimental uses of technology found in Nam June Paik's work.

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For the performance, MyFi Studio created Homage to Nam June Paik (Electric Fish), an interactive project designed for you to submit instructions to control our performance remotely.

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What is an instrument? Who is the performer? Where is the listener?

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Your instructions inform how we perform. Each NFT has a unique prompt + Electric Fish toy. The instructions connect our art + music with the internet + the blockchain. 

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Inspired by the artists Nam June Paik + 0x113d, Homage to Nam June Paik is creating tools for the interplay between the art, artist, audience + machine. Nam June Paik frequently used instructions or scores for his performances.

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Instructions are the art + tool + performance + archive. The lines are blurry because they are in flux. Nam June Paik wrote instructions for himself, for other artists, and for the audience. On multiple occasions, the audience received instructions with a dried fish in an envelope.

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"What sort of art is possible when both the art and artist is alive? When the art and the artist are responding to each other and working together to create something beautiful?” Bret Victor urges us to stop drawing dead fish. Use technology to activate the relationship between the medium, artist, and user. 

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When Nam June Paik hands you an envelope with a dried fish and instructions, the fish is no longer dead. The fish is alive on your screen as you glide your finger along our Electric Fish and pet its digital scales. The art is reacting to you. Art is alive.

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If blockchain is a fish, will you feed it your instructions? The submittable instructions + Electric Fish toy is written in p5.js + stored on Ethereum. 

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A timeline of fish (Dead + Alive +Dried + Digital) art in Miami + Japan + online:
 

1. Tokyo: MyFi Studio experiences Nam June Paik’s TV Fish (1975) at Watari Museum. Featuring live fish, 2 aquariums, 2 monitors, and 1-channel audio visual image, TV Fish left us buzzing.
    

2. Online: 0x113d teaches our class about “Stop Drawing Dead Fish” Bret Victor: behavior + responsiveness is the essence of the computer as an art medium. + what that means is that any time we create art that doesn't have behavior, we're not living up to the potential of the medium.
    

3. Fukuoka: Watch NJP's largest installation in the country: Fuku/Luck, Fuku=Luck, Matrix (1996), a giant grid of 180 CRT TVs at Canal City Hakata Mall.
    

4. Tokyo: Find that special book Nam June Paik: I Expose the Music (2023) at Watarium Museum in Japan. 
    

5. Miami: Build interactive video synth tool of fish scales for our workshop + performance at Locust Projects.
    

6. Miami: Read Nam June Paik's instructions for Liberation Sonata for Fish (1969). The audience gets an envelope w a dead fish + instructions: please, return the fish (inside) to the sea. 
    

7. Blockchain: Homage to Nam June Paik (Electric Fish) Performance Instructions collection drops on 10.12.2023.
    

8. Miami: MyFi Studio perform Electric Rice Field at The Bass Museum of Art in Miami *with ur instructions* for Nam June Paik: The Miami Years exhibition as the first Nam June Paik Notations.

 

We think about Nam June Paik (1932-2006) + how his art as a composer/video artist/musician/Fluxus was informed by the experimental composer John Cage (1912-1992) who would become his mentor/friend/collaborator.

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We've been creating art, music, performance individually + collaboratively (since we could dance/hold an instrument) but our trajectory changed once we encountered Mathcastles. MyFi Studio is about chance + collaboration online + IRL.

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Learn more here :) 
 

Text by Aimee Rubensteen