Nam June Paik's Unpublished Korean Article and His Interactive Musique Concrète Projects

Abstract

Nam June Paik was a pioneering creator of interactive sound art before he became a cult figure in the field of video art. While Paik gradually developed interactive sound art in West Germany, he wrote several articles about contemporary music in Europe. Specifically, a musique concrète article for Korean readers is significant as a seed of his interactive projects. This study examines the content of the music article and articulates the relationship between musique concrète and Paik's interactive sound projects: Record Shashlik (1963) and Random Access (1963).

Nam June Paik graduated from the University of Tokyo with a thesis on Arnold Schoenberg's serialism in spring 1956. Going on to Munich to study this elitist mathematical form in late 1956, he soon became more interested in postserialism as an updated version of it; the music of Anton Webern, a Schoenberg disciple, was the topic of his thesis in musicology [1]. The next year, Paik attended the Darmstadt International Summer Course for New Music and transferred to a composition program at Freiburg Music Academy. He also started writing music articles for Korean and Japanese readers that same year. Paik published these articles from 1957 to 1963, a time frame that overlapped with his academic years in West Germany. This period also coincides with the development of his interactive sound art projects. This study examines Paik's early writing in order to discern the relationship between his ideas about musique concrète as a music researcher and his fundamental perspective on interactive art as an art practitioner.

The background of paik's musique concrète

In the late 1940s, French composer Pierre Schaeffer coined musique concrète to refer to his collage-based music creations. He first used 74-rpm records to manipulate prerecorded sounds, later moving on to audiotapes. This avant-garde music mainly emphasized two intertwined elements: sound fragments and acousmatic listening. Musique concrète composers appropriated 0.5-to 5-second-long sound fragments, including recordings of everyday sound from ringing bells, trains and humming tops [2,3]. These appropriated sound fragments helped the audience experience the sounds themselves without their text or context. This idea of acousmatic listening originated with Pythagoras, who lectured behind a curtain so that his disciples could only listen to him without seeing him. Schaeffer explored musique concrète to compose experimental, palpable and phenomenological music for listeners.

While Paik was dissatisfied with the banality of serialism, he became interested in the "phenomenological" musique concrète composition, in opposition to the "mathematical" 12-tone technique in serialism. He finally visited Schaeffer's musique concrète studio in 1958. Based on his one-day experience in the Paris studio, Paik wrote a one-page musique concrète article for the Korean newspaper Chayushinmun in the same year.

Paik's musique concrète article

Paik's exhibition catalog Videa 'n' Videology: Nam June Paik (1959–1973) (1974) includes the entire musique concrète article without any translations from the original Korean except for a simple English description: "1958, 'A Report on the Paris studio of Pierre Schaeffer and Musique Concrète.' Chayushinmun, Seoul, Korea" [4]. This article appears in the appendix along with an excerpt from his Japanese article "Après Serie (1961)," which examines the music of his mentors: Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage [5]. After becoming a master of video art, Paik republished the whole catalog as a part of the exhibition catalog Nam June Paik Video Groove 2004 (2004) [6]. A counterpart to Videa 'n' Videology in Syracuse, NY, Nam June Paik Video Groove 2004 is the catalog for Paik's international exhibition at the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin. This contributed to the introduction of Paik's musique concrète article to the global public. In addition, an electronic copy of the article is available in the online archive of Paik's colleagues Woody and Steina Vasulka [7]. For these reasons, Paik's musique concrète article is now widely available both online and offline, although it is still unexplored due to the language barrier.

"A Report on the Paris studio of Pierre Schaeffer and Musique Concrète" consists of three parts: Paik's journey to Schaeffer's studio; pioneers of musique concrète; and Schaeffer's contribution to the music studio.

The first part begins with a vivid description of Paik's actual walk to Schaeffer's musique concrète studio in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district in Paris. Paik mentions women with Brigitte Bardot hairstyles, Algerian gangsters, existentialist youths and an old lady who talked about philosophy. Paik later confessed that he exaggerated facts to make articles more interesting [8]; his writing emphasizes the exotic atmosphere for remote Korean readers. The first part nevertheless reveals that Paik physically visited the musique concrète studio.

Second, Paik briefly introduces major musique concrète pioneers. He mentions precursors such as Paul Hindemith and Ernst Toch, who manipulated prerecorded sounds by using several gramophones, and Italian futurist Luigi Russolo, who invited noise into art. Paik stresses that Schaeffer's musique concrète revived the tradition of this forgotten music. His article emphasizes that Schaeffer's musique concrète Étude Aux Chemins de Fer (1949) and Symphonie Pour un Homme Seul (1948–1950) derived from these pioneers' endeavors, as well as from the development of new technology.

Finally, Paik stresses that Schaeffer's contemporaries, such as Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Iannis Xenakis and Luc Ferrari, became leading members of the musique concrète studio. His contributions to musique concrète became a critical seed for studio music and for a growing phenomenon of electronic music studios around the world. Even though "A Report on the Paris studio of Pierre Schaeffer and Musique Concrète" is an essay-style short article, it is substantial in showing the degree of Paik's involvement in musique concrète and his significant impact on it;.

Paik's unpublished musique concrète article

Paik's exhibition catalog Nam June Paik (1982) encompasses a comprehensive list of his publications, exhibitions and interviews in both East and West. Specifically, the list of his publications includes not only German and English articles but also Korean and Japanese ones. However, "A Report on the Paris Studio of Pierre Schaeffer and Musique Concrète" is not mentioned on the list at all. Instead, "The Music of 20'5 Century" is the first Korean article and the only Korean one listed for 1958. I went to great lengths to verify the publication date of Paik's musique concrète article, checking every page of Chayushinmun for the year 1958 at the National Library of Korea. In conclusion, the musique concrète article was never published in 1958. However, it is clear that Paik wrote this article in 1958 for the following reasons.

First, the article includes Paik's visit to Schaeffer's musique concrète studio. According to correspondence between Paik and Wolfgang Steinecke, the chair of the Darmstadt summer course, Paik visited the studio to compose his ongoing musique concrète project on 16 April 1958 but could not finish his project within the day and wanted to return. However, he decided to use an electronic music studio in West Germany instead of the Paris studio [9]. Thus, the musique concrète article could not have been written before 16 April 1958.

Second, the literal translation of the article's title, "Pierre Schaeffer and Musique Concrète—The Avant-Garde Contemporary Composer Who Gives Power to Noise," shows that Paik wrote this article before he met Cage on 3 September 1958 in Darmstadt. In fact, Paik did not consider Cage an important composer at all. However, he showed admiration for Cage soon after the Darmstadt summer course, in September 1958 [10]. If Paik wrote the musique concrète article after the Darmstadt summer course in 1958, it is hardly possible that he omitted Cage from the list of avant-garde composers in the article, which deals with noise. In a letter to Steinecke on 8 December 1958, Paik directly mentions that his ongoing project Hommage à John Cage (1959) would be neither electronic nor concrete [11,12]. Paik mentions performance music including noise from a scooter and a performance of a bullet shot through a glass. This idea was originally inspired by Cage's performance at the Darmstadt summer course in 1958.

Korean-born composer Isang Yun shared a dormitory with Paik during the 1958 Darmstadt summer course and had a chance to listen to new ideas about his music. In a letter to his wife, Yun illustrates Paik's idiosyncratic perspectives and his plans for the future. In the opening part, Yun describes that Paik plans to study electronic music; after attending Cage's performance, Paik wanted to experiment with aggressive performances, such as making a crashing sound like that of firing a bullet through glass. In the same letter, Yun explains that Paik would like to explore how to deconstruct music itself [13]. It is clear that Paik's interests in music transferred from musique concrète and electronic music to Cage-style theatrical music soon after meeting Cage. Paik found a new possibility of music in performance and became more interested in Cage's live collage-based music than Schaeffer's prerecorded musique concrète. This is a major approach to Paik's debut, Hommage à John Cage. As the title indicates, in a departure from musique concrète, Paik had already begun to focus on Cage and his performance music. Thus the musique concrète article would have been written before 3 September 1958, when he first met Cage.

Finally, at the end of the article, Paik introduces himself as "musique concrète composing researcher." As mentioned, Paik did not consider making musique concrète projects after 1958. It would be a paradox for Paik to present himself as "musique concrète composing researcher" if the musique concrète article were published after 1958. For these reasons, it is evident that the musique concrète article was written as a draft after Paik's visit to the musique concrète studio on 16 April 1958, before the encounter with Cage on 3 September 1958.

Paik's unofficial first korean article

The musique concrète article and another 1958 Paik article, "The Music of 20'5 Century," have the same typography, letter-spacing and order of title, subtitle and author's name. They both must have been designed by the same person in Chayushinmun. In this regard, the musique concrète article seems to have been edited in a similar period of "The Music of 20'5 Century." In the musique concrète article, Paik wrote Pierre Schaeffer variously as 피엘 셰어헬, 세헬 and 삐에르 쉐펠, and, incorrectly, as PIERRE SHAFFER. Even though there was no precise rule for the writing of French words in Korean in the 1950s, Paik should have used consistent Korean letters for the composer's name. Due to these fundamental errors, it is unclear whether this article is the final version or not. Paik sent the editor of Chayushinmun a draft of "The Music of 20'5" and received the draft with feedback when he finalized it between Germany and Korea in the years 1957–1958 [14]. I postulate that during the delay of "The Music of 20'5," Paik wanted to publish the musique concrète article first, but it underwent a similarly long editing procedure and finally was canceled because Paik's interests in music had already changed from Schaeffer's musique concrète to Stockhausen's electronic and spatial music. Instead, Paik published "The Music of 20'5 Century" mainly to introduce Stockhausen's music in August 1958 right before attending the Darmstadt summer course.

Paik only introduced himself once in his first article "The Bauhaus of Music" in the Japanese music journal Ongaku Geijutsu [15]. Likewise, he would introduce himself as "musique concrète composing researcher" because the musique concrète article is the first one in Chayushinmun; his official first Korean article "The Music of 20'5 Century" does not have any information on its author. For these reasons, Paik's musique concrète article, while unpublished, is the unofficial first Korean article.

Paik's interactive musique concrète projects

Electronic music composition was developed by diverse experiments from serialism to mathematical and algorithmic music. Among the experiments, musique concrète was one of the main contributors to electronic music [16]. Likewise, the founder of the electronic music studio at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln (West German Broadcasting Cologne, or WDR), Herbert Eimert, acknowledged that Schaeffer's work was the beginning of electronic music in one of the last articles that emphasized arts-and-crafts collages and noise bricolages [17]. Similarly, in Paik's musique concrète article, he argues that Pierre Schaeffer was a main figure for developing electronic music along with Stockhausen and Eimert. Likewise, Schaeffer's musique concrète also played an important role in the invention of Paik's interactive sound art.

Paik exhibited two interactive musique concrète projects that create a bridge to practices from musique concrète. Record Shashlik and Random Access were installed in the basement of the Galerie Parnasse during his first solo show, Exposition of Music—Electronic Television, in 1963. They consist of two main musique concrète recorders: a 78-rpm record turntable and an audiotape recorder. Record Shashlik includes a turntable with a long mobile cartridge and its 78-rpm records. Paik threaded several records in two different axes on the turntable-like shashlik, which consists of skewers threaded with meats and vegetables. The audience can put the cartridge on any rotating record to hear the recorded sounds. Likewise, Random Access uses a long mobile head from the tape recorder. Paik attached pieces of audiotape strips to a white wall; it looked like black-and-white graffiti. The mobile head is an interactive interface that allows participants to play back a specific part of the music storage. Even though Record Shashlik and Random Access employ different music devices, they have the same strategy: the audience's random access to sound databases with extended musical interfaces.

Record Shashlik and Random Access are Paik's great achievements based on the experience of musique concrète. Paik's haptic experiences in the musique concrète studio in Paris were reflected in his musical interactive art. Their environments came from the process of editing musique concrète. In other words, audiences visited a quasi–musique concrète studio and had the experience of composing their own music in real time. Paik declared, "I am no longer a cook (composer), but only a feinkosthandler (delicatessen proprietor)" [18]. On the poster for Exposition of Music—Electronic Television, Paik wrote a subtitle, "How to be satisfied with 70%" [19]. He vacated the fully authoritative position of composer and composed 70%—and left 30% for the audience [20]. This shows that Paik wanted to be satisfied with his unfinished projects or interactive art as an extremely progressive art form. Whereas electronic music and musique concrète usually presented a prerecorded seamless sound with collage techniques by using precise editing systems, his interactive art provided unexpected sounds, which had hardly been mastered by rehearsals, with normal audiences. In comparison to Cage's indeterminate music (which can be less indeterminate in professional musicians' rehearsals [21]), Paik's interactive musique concrète projects aimed to be more indeterminate by encouraging the audiences to escape their passive roles as listeners. The audience became participatory performers creating indeterminate musique concrète compositions as palpable music.

Revisiting paik's musique concrète

In "The Music of 20'5 Century," Paik emphasizes that serialism removes all social hierarchies and in the same vein uses tones in a new order, without preferences between notes [22]. Likewise, Schaeffer's musique concrète shows no difference between the sound of a musical instrument and the sound of a train; they are both "sound fragments." Musique concrète blurs the boundary between music and noise; any sound can be used for music. Using each note equally in twelve-tone serialism is naturally linked to appropriating any sound fragments from instrumental sounds to noises equally in musique concrète. Composing musique concrète liberates sounds from their original references and gives them a new meaning. Even though Paik mentioned that his first main performance music, Hommage à John Cage, derived from his own reinterpretation of Dada [23], Paik's musique concrète article shows that Schaeffer's music is a main contributor to his collage-based music, which blurs the boundary between music and noise. In this regard, the article is a missing and significant part of Paik's artistic life between Schoenberg and Cage.

Paik revisited musique concrète without any detailed information, as he did in Videa 'n' Videology. In 1996, soon after recovering from a stroke, Paik made 73 collage works with his memorable photographs, which depict his childhood home, early performances in Germany, the mentor Cage, and so on. Each photograph bears his own handwriting, including mysterious mathematical symbols, Korean descriptions and abstract drawings. Specifically, he made a collage drawing with Schaeffer's picture. The photo consists of Paik facing away at left, his wife Shigeko Kubota at right and Schaeffer looking at Paik in the center [24]. Paik drew many oval lines on the edges of the photo, as if a child had wanted to highlight it. It seems Paik used his visual collage skill to emphasize the impact of this pioneer of collage-based music on his own collage-based art.

Conclusion

"A Report on the Paris Studio of Pierre Schaeffer and Musique Concrète" shows an unexplored part of Nam June Paik's art. The "musique concrète composing researcher," who had pursued purist serialism once, was involved in creating collage-based music. Paik unfolded the process of editing musique concrète for the audience and so contributed to an unprecedented environment for interactive sound art. In this regard, Paik's musique concrète article is essential material in revealing the relationship between musique concrète and his interactive art. Paik's musique concrète research and practice is a significant seed for his interactive sound art.