Nam June Paik, «German Pavilion: Marco Polo», 1993
German Pavilion: Electronic Superhighway | Photograph: Roman Mensing/artdoc.de http://www.artdoc.de | © Nam June Paik

Paik developed the idea of an 'Electronic Superhighway' as early as 1974 in his text 'Media Planning for the Postindustrial Society'. In 1992 Bill Clinton made building a 5 billion dollar 'Data Superhighway' the central plank of his election campaign. Paik's ironic comment: 'Bill Cinton pinched my idea.' And so he dedicated one of his large video wall multimonitor installations to this theme. A video montage runs simultaneously on several channels, extending from John Cage to quotations from Paik's satellite broadcast 'Wrap around the World'. In future a spectator on a media highway will have a similarly varied selection available and will have the sense of a the 'Global Groove', which Paik conjured up in his 1973 videotape.