Being someone that is interested in the dharma, the TV Buddha (1974) By Nam June Paik, caught my attention upon first sight. I also have an appreciation for TV media as well as suffer a discomfort from it. TV as media helped spread the latest news and connect people. I cannot speak with complete confidence of what TV was like when it first came out, however by 1974 when this installation was being shown TV was not brand new. I imagine how it shaped people perspectives on all sorts of issues, both giving hope perhaps from some influential speech, or fear from the latest on what ever war was being covered. Moving forward to and beyond the millennium, TV has evolved into much more than just a way to inform people. Now it provides bits of entertainment in between the chaos of advertisements that encourage you to pamper your wants before your needs. It showcases a staged reality presenting a specific perspective as superior to other. Fuck Mtv. There’s nothing dramatic about most the shit they have to show and it gives people that I have to deal with the idea that they can act that way because they saw it on some phony reality show. What started out as entertainment has become a machine for setting a trend and following of negativity of things hardly relevant to everyone. I can’t hate to hard. There is something to be learned from everyone and everything, and television is no exception. There is good in the TV, if not from a few shows, but what we can learn from the latent behavior of its impact on us. When I look at the TV Buddha I see vigilance and life constantly reflecting art and vise versa. It is linear in the sense that it has a constant calmness and awareness. I imagine if you stand around the installation correctly you can become apart of this Buddha’s television program.
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