Nam was a renowned Korean installation artist who lived in America. He worked with several media and is considered as the father of video art. His most common media for installation were television sets. Some of his famous installations included the Egg Grows of 1989, Electronic Superhighway in 1995, The TV Garden in 2000, and The Elephant Cart in 2001. The semiotic as an aspect of art is the study of art symbols and signs in individuality or grouped to give a person more insight from the work source and meaning.
All artists have a language they create by following a set of rules, standards and basics of picture-making. An individual artist has a resemblance in the images he creates and when grouped would lead to a language. The study of this phenomenon from what exists from an individual image then grouped to form an image is called semiotics (Ferreira, 2007).
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Nam’s work involved the images from one television set. When different images were brought together by grouping different television sets and other electronic media, the semiotic nature is evoked when the viewer has to interpret the language and formulate a meaning out of it. Take for instance the Electronic Superhighway that Nam installed in 1995. Move closer and the viewer is only capable of seeing the individualistic feeds from each TV. Move further and the viewer can comprehend that the grouping represents the United States of America and the different major trans ways. However, what does it mean? Is it that American are connected by the content they watch or is it that Americans are affected by the content they watch? Maybe it could mean that many American’s are glued to their seats watching TV and they should come out and travel to see the world? The beauty of art is that interpretation can be what the viewer relates to.
My view is with the former. Nam may have felt that many people worship their sets while there is a lot that is happening outside of that world. We should come out and have a moment without technology.
Reference
Ferreira, A. (2007). Art & Perception . How useful is semiotics as a method for analysing works of art? | Art & Perception. http://artandperception.com/2007/02/how-useful-is-semiotics-as-a-method-for-analysing-works-of-art.html.
