Nam June Paik / Charlotte Moorman "Opera Sextronique" turned "TV Bra for Living Sculpture" + "Electronic Super Highway"

Paik is a Korean-American artist who is widely considered to be the first video artist. Early in his career he was apart of the Neo-Dada art movement inspired by John Cage and his use of everyday sounds and noises in his music.

Once Paik moved to New York he formed a long standing collaborative relationship with classical cellist Charlotte Moorman to combine his video, music, and performance. In the work TV Cello, the pair stacked televisions on top of one another, so that they formed the shape of an actual cello. When Moorman drew her bow across the "cello," images of her and other cellists playing appeared on the screens. Though Paik has made many videos, had many multi-media performances, what initially gained him notoriety was Opera Sextronique, during which Moorman was arrested for performing topless and convicted for lewd conduct. As a result of her arrest in NY, and the press it gained, a law was passed to allow nudity in performance art. Here she is talking about it in an interview, which is pretty amazing....



The piece which originally was banned by the NY police, was later performed as an alternate version and recorded with Moorman wearing a tv bra and renamed "TV Bra for Living Sculpture" (posted above).

Paik also is credited with coining the term "Electronic Super Highway" and he used the phrase as the title for this piece:
You can read more about the huge impace Paik had on not only the arts, but also technology, here.