“Music is Not Sound”, 1998, is a mixed media sculpture that appropriates the coin-operated twin TV chairs ubiquitous throughout American airports in the 1980s. A single-channel video playing across both monitors depicts fragments of piano playing and musical instruments and clips of video all subjected to Paik’s signature onslaught of disruptive editing. The color bars that span the chairs’ upholstery recall the test patterns of early television screens. These chairs are hand painted with calligraphic Chinese characters across their sides and backs—upon which are affixed a gong and cymbal—which reference the inscriptions traditionally seen on a jangseung or village guardian, a Korean totem traditionally carved from wood and placed at a village border as a boundary marker. Paik made six sets of TV chairs in total, titling and constructing each work around a specific artistic discipline: Literature is Not Book, Dance is Not Jumping, Painting is Not Art, Drama is not Theatre, and Star is Not Actor.

Installation Video: https://vimeo.com/421302080

Full Video: https://vimeo.com/361396955
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