Abstract
An exploration of Nam June Paik’s work entitled, 'Phiber Optik', one of thirty artworks in his installation Cybertown at the San Jose Museum of Art (Spring 1996). Paik employs the name, 'Phiber Optik', as an homage to the famous hacker Mark Abene, aka Phiber Optik. The article compares Abene, who spent most of his time in the “dark side” of digital information, to Nicholas Negroponte’s optimistic prediction of emancipatory powers of digitization in his book Being Digital. It elucidates the evolution of hackers and how their work became considered an artform as forerunners of an art movement the author refers to as “neo e-xpresionism.” Nam June Paik’s 'Phiber Optik' is a physical representation of hybrid digital art for the online persona, unifying man and machine.
Preservation Process
Archived from http://switch.sjsu.edu/archive/nextswitch/switch_engine/front/front.php%3Fartc=169.html. Documentation of the preservation processes used for this collection is available at https://github.com/NickSzydlowski/switch. Metadata for this item was created and augmented by Steven Canoy, Spring 2022, ART 104.
Recommended Citation
Lange, Loretta L.
(1998)
"Phiber Optik and the Masters of Deception,"
SWITCH: Vol. 5:
No.
1, Article 1.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/switch/vol5/iss1/1