Confused Rain | Posthumous collaboration with Nam June Paik | 2008 | Computer Program
Synopsis
An expansion of Nam June Paik's Confused Rain (1967) into a computer program that produces an animation of the letters C-O-N-F-U-S-E falling like rain drops.
Artist Statement
From Nam June Paik: Video 'n' Videology 1959-1973:
Confused Rain (Computer Graphic, 1967). Simulation of rain falling through the lettters C-O-N-F-U-S-E.1
From the vitrine for Confused Rain at the Tate Modern:
Spread of Video 'n' Videology 1959-1973 (1974) showing a reproduction of Confused Rain (1967, lithograph on paper).
Paik wanted to use computers to generate random patterns, mimicking the chaotic character of his semi–improvised performances. However, he found programming to be too rigid for his anarchic experiments. In this computer– generated visual poem the letters of the word CONFUSE appear scattered at random across a sheet of paper. Paik made Confused Rain ‘to protest the lack of common sense in the computer’.The Estate of Nam June Paik Z75112.
From Gregory Zinman's "Nam June Paik's Etude 1 and the Indeterminate origins of Digital Media Art":
Confused Rain depicts a jumbled array of the letters that compose the word confuse, printed in black plotter ink on a white sheet of paper.2 At the top of the piece is a note in Paik’s hand: “Confused rain (computer graphic). Simulation of rain falling through the letters of C-O-N-FU-S-E.” The studies for Confused Rain—those papers in the archive labeled “Paik Study 1–12”—show that Paik employed a random-number generator to select the x and y coordinates that positioned the individual letters on the page, allowing the computer to determine the overall shape of the piece. Further study of the FORTRAN code for Confused Rain revealed that Paik output multiple versions of the piece as moving images on 35mm film, though these works have since been lost, and it is impossible to know whether Paik thought they were successful.3
Screenings/Exhibitions
October 1, 2022 – January 14, 2023. Computational Poetics, Beall Center for Art + Technology, Irvine, California. Curated by Hannah B. Higgins and David Familian.
November 19, 2009. See The Voice, Visible Verse 2009, Pacific Cinematheque, Vancouver, British Columbia. Curated by Heather Haley.
- Nam June Paik, Nam June Paik: Video 'n' Ideology 1959-1973, ed. Judson Rosebush (Syracuse: Everson Museum of Art, 1974), 30. [↩]
- A number of versions of the studies indicated that Paik made a two-minute film of the piece, perhaps as it registered. These have been lost and have never been seen by the public, while the static image was reproduced in Nam June Paik: Videa ’n’ Videology 1959–1973. [↩]
- Gregory Zinman, "Nam June Paik's Etude 1 and the Indeterminate origins of Digital Media Art," October 164 (Spring 2018): 9. [↩]