This text is from the publication Permanence Through Change: The Variable Media Approach, published in 2003 by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology.

The following are excerpts from "Preserving the Immaterial: A Conference on Variable Media," which took place at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, on March 30-31, 2001. The conversation between John G. Hanhardt and Steven Vitiello about the inherent variability of Nam June Paik's work is preceded by an introductory text by Hanhardt.

Nam June Paik is one of the key legendary and visionary figures of late 20th-century art. His career is an epic global journey from his birthplace in Seoul, Korea, to studies in Japan and, then, to travels in Germany in the 1950s to pursue his interest in modernism and music. Through the powerful examples of Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, he became deeply involved in avant-garde performance and the transformation of video into an artists' medium. Paik's early explorations of interactivity and modification of the television set were presented in his solo exhibition Exposition of Music—Electronic Television at the Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, Germany. This exhibition attested to increasing interest in transforming the electronic medium of video into an art form that would bring the dimensions of time and movement to art practice. In 1964, Paik traveled to the United States, where he settled in New York City. He quickly became a leading innovator—as he forged strategies to link science and technology—to an emerging generation of artists seeking to create new forms of expression.

Paik seized on Sony's newly portable videotape player and recorder, introduced in the United States in the mid-1960s, and fashioned a remarkable body of sculptures, installations, and videotapes. He developed the Paik-Abe Video Synthesizer, which allowed him to manipulate and transform the recorded and live video image. His solo exhibitions at the Howard Wise Gallery, Galeria Bonino, and the New School for Social Research; his productions created at the Television Laboratories at WNET and WGBH; and his legendary performances and collaborations with Charlotte Moorman—for whom he created TV Cello—were highly influential and brought him increasing critical and public recognition throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

In the following decades, Paik was to transform virtually all aspects of video through his innovative sculptures, installations, single-channel videotapes, productions for television, and performances. As a teacher, writer, lecturer, and advisor to foundations, he continually informed and transformed 20th-century contemporary art. In 1982, I organized a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art devoted to celebrating Paik's career and innovative achievements. As part of this exhibition, the large-scale installation TV Garden (1974) was presented. This seminal work features an array of televisions of various sizes displayed among plants in a darkened space. The monitors play Paik's videotape Global Groove. This videotape, originally produced for broadcast, envisioned an expanded future for television, when, as the narrator Russell Connor says in the opening of the program, "TV Guide would be as thick as the Manhattan telephone directory." In editing the videotape, Paik used his Paik-Abe Video Synthesizer to create a vibrant collage of artists' films, television commercials, and his own earlier work presented as constantly changing channels of media entertainment drawn from around the world. Thus the growth of television is echoed in the plants, as the videotapes flicker like glowing electronic flowers. TV Garden creates a playful and profound meditation on our expanding media environment.

With the presentation of The Worlds of Nam June Paik at the Guggenheim Museum in 2000, I was able to bring together a survey that represented all aspects of his career, including the re-installation of TV Garden. A subsequent workshop with Paik and his studio assistants Jon Huffman and Stephen Vitiello centered on capturing the key elements and establishing the guidelines to define and determine how to effectively reconstruct the experience of TV Garden. Among the specific issues discussed were how to preserve the look of the original television sets, the ratio of televisions to plants, the shape and size of the display, and the conditions of lighting and sound amplification. A documentary history of installations and detailed discussion on all aspects of this particular work made for a fruitful and focused analysis of what will be required to maintain this artwork into the future.

The following are excerpts from "Preserving the Immaterial: A Conference on Variable Media," which took place at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, on March 30”"31, 2001.

John Hanhardt: One issue I wish to raise regarding TV Garden is the number of video channels in the work. In TV Garden's installation at the Whitney and at the Guggenheim Museum, a single channel of video played on all the monitors, but there have been instances of its installation with two channels, for example, in New Zealand.

Stephen Vitiello: That's right.

JH: I think the choice of channels has a lot to do with—and this is Nam June's expressed thinking— the impact of the work. Stephen has mentioned sound, which is obviously a key component in Global Groove, the video which is played on TV Garden's monitors. So TV Garden is a celebration of television's future, growing and spreading—visually and aurally—in a garden. Nature and technology, spread and growth, suffuse the piece.

Exemplifying these ideas, which are key to understanding Nam June's response to the medium of television, TV Garden is a seminal work, influential to other artists thinking about the medium as an art form. That said, if a proposed space for TV Garden is larger than in previous instances, other channels can be added to create impact and to establish multiple points of view for the spectators.

SV: In 1996, I introduced Nam June to two curators from Brazil, who were asking him to do his first major exhibition in Brazil. He exhibited TV Garden, TV Fish, and TV Buddha and explained to me that these pieces could be done working from a distance—the curators could get their own plants, their own fish, and their own Brazilian Buddha. When I started trying to pin him down on how to construct these pieces, his favorite thing to say was, "Use your judgment." [Laughter] But there are always both fixed and variable elements in these pieces. With TV Garden, he told me that they had to have at least 30 TVs of varying sizes. If they had 30, then the installation had to play Global Groove. If they could get 40 TVs, then the installation had to play an additional tape from his studio called Oriental Paintings, which I don't think he had used. In other cases, for example, in New Zealand, it was a different piece. It's like a score in a performance—some things have to be done, but there's room for improvisation. Often, he allows some of us to be the improvisers, as long as we keep the basic point.

JH: Stephen is identifying traits of an artist who was coming out of Fluxus. We have to look at the nature of Paik's aesthetic, how it developed, how he created, and how he viewed the material. Paik has asked that related drawings and plans as well as interviews he has given are among the resources we make available to future generations of curators and scholars dealing with this artwork. As we refine our approach to the piece, I also want to consider TV Garden's equipment and installation. One issue that has been raised concerns the television sets themselves: What televisions should we have? Looking to the future, how should we approach the changes in the technology? Nam June's words about it are "maximum decontrol." Meaning, he envisioned works or ideas that could change with time and technology and that could exist despite the threat of no longer having cathode-ray tubes. As a replacement for nonworking cathode-ray tubes, Jon Ippolito raised the idea of embedding a flat screen inside the original television frame. What do you think of using television casings to emulate the original look? We have already seen how Paik has placed late model monitors in early TV casings.

SV: I love quotes from Nam June. [Laughter] This is from 1974, when he says, "I don't like to have complete control—that would be boring. What I learned from John Cage is to enjoy every second by decontrol. Surprises and disappointments are built in the machine."

TV Garden is a conceptual work. He may never have written it down, but there is an implied score: play Global Groove with sound on multiple monitors in a room; monitors face up and surrounded by plants.

And that is what's key. Beyond that, he would be fairly flexible. Flat screens inside casings would be fine. The piece doesn't require the same casings that were installed at the Everson Museum of Art in 1974 or the same casings that were at the Whitney in 1982, but it is important for the Guggenheim to trace the history of the work. When presented, viewers should understand that TV Garden was originally conceived of in 1974 and has a history of different ways of being presented.

JH: You've raised a complex set of points. As a conceptual work, TV Garden can respond to the changes in the medium over time. There's also flexibility in terms of location and the differing aesthetics of various televisions and types of plants in different locales. Yet it's important to have historic examples of the various TV Garden installations. Let's say we were doing an historical exhibition of video from 1970 to 1975. If we wanted to represent TV Garden as it was seen then, it would be very important to have those particular televisions as a resource. For this reason, the storage of television casings is something we should pursue. When we do a show in a contemporary way, we should also display photographic documentation of a variety of previous installations. Monitor brands and types vary according to availability and locale. This is a part of the flexibility and dimensionality of the work.

What if we extend the same issue to installation? Is there an ideal space? Is there only one way that the piece should be shown?

SV: Many people—especially people outside of the country, where Nam June can't be to oversee installation—take advantage of his flexibility; for example, in Brazil I requested black pedestals, and they wrote, "OK, everything's ready, and we got these beautiful white pedestals." [Laughter] And I said, "But no. . . . " They must have thought, "But he allowed us to choose Brazilian plants, so white pedestals should work." I did have to ask Jon Huffman of Nam June's studio to call, as a closer representative, and say basically that the show would be canceled unless they followed the instructions.

The piece has been flexible and will probably continue to be flexible. Nam June would be happy with the piece as long as we're aware of those key points that he set in stone.