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Random Access - Nam June Paik, 1963 (2000 version)
Strips of audiotape, open-reel audio deck, extended playback head, and speakers. Dimensions vary with installation
For his first solo show, at a gallery in Wuppertal, Germany, Paik tacked fifty-odd strips of prerecorded audiotape to the wall and invited visitors to run a handheld playback head wired to speakers along the strips at whatever speed or direction they desired. Unlike some of today's closed formats like Java or Flash, Random Access was no black box; on the contrary, Paik exposed the guts of a tape player to his viewers, offering a hands-on feeling (quite literally) for how audio technology worked and what it was capable of.
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