Director
Catch 44, co-produced by Nam June Paik, fuses Cage's compositional precepts with the immediacy and real time of video. Cage is seen performing and preparing for the program "WGBX: A Telecast for Composers and Technicians," presented by the Boston public television station WGBX-TV (Channel 44). Subverting audience expectations and underlining Cage's belief that improvisation is a critical element of composition, here the act of scoring music becomes the performance. For Cage, whose work embraces paradox, the ambient noise of the broadcast studio and the alternation of sound and silence determine the nature and direction of the performance from moment to moment. Through his use of repetition, absurdity, found sound and silence, Cage compels the audience to rethink traditional assumptions of musical theory and composition.
Director
This early masterwork of electronic experimentation was created by Paik while he was Artist-in-Residence at WGBH in Boston. The title refers to the day it was made — September 23, 1969. Paik creates a stunning visual collage that fuses spontaneous, free-form experimentation with virtuosity and control. Paik manipulates and merges pure electronic abstractions, footage captured "live" from television, prerecorded material, and images recorded in the studio, including the faces of WGBH producers Fred Barzyk and Olivia Tappan. Exploring the interactivity of video and audio synthesizers, Paik processes these images with live and prerecorded sounds.
