Frequently Asked Questions about MY MINI AVI



Q: whois Nam June Paik?
A: Korean born artist Nam June Paik (pictured on the far left and the far right in the gif above) was a prolific + talented artist, composer, member of the FLUXUS movements + is often mythically regarded as the "Father of Video Art". Paik played an important role in the early Video Art moment before the genre of Video Art was clearly defined as an area of artistic activity.

Q: what is the Wobbulator?
A: Nam June Paik + Shuya Abe (pictured on the middle left in the gif above) collaboratively developed the Paik-Abe Raster Manipulation Unit (aka the Wobbulator) in 1970. technically, the Wobbulator disrupts a data stream, in this case an incoming television signal as it is being rendered on screen by the electron beam of the modified television set.

Q: how do i make a Wobbulator?
A: in 1980 Sherry Miller Hocking (pictured in the television set that Nam June Paik is holding in the gif above) of The Experimental Television Center + Richard Brewster with Walter Wright wrote an in depth txt on the Wobbulator called "Raster Manipulation Unit: Operation and Construction". all the nfo you might need is in this doc but i doubt if you will be able to find the specific model of television that these Wobbulator specs refer to.

Q: warez can i find a Wobbulator?
A: The Experimental Television Center has a functional Paik-Abe Raster Manipulation Unit (aka the Wobbulator) available for use by artists through the Artist in Residence Program. i (jonCates) travelled to The Experimental Television Center with jon.satrom + (as core developers of criticalartware) we did a short artist residency during which we interviewed Sherry Miller Hocking (for the criticalartware project), were trained onThe Experimental Television Center matrix system by Hamk Rudolph + made art. the Paik-Abe Wobbulated CO.KR version of the JODI %WRONG Browser video output in MY MINI AVI project was made during that time. jon.satrom assisted with the patch programming + matrixing while i (jonCates) Wobbulated %WRONG Browsers.

Q: should i goto The Experimental Television Center?
A: yes, definitely!

Q: did Nam June Paik goto The Experimental Television Center?
A: yes, Paik was the first artist in residence @ The Experimental Television Center.

Q: whois JODI?
JODI is the collaborative project of the artists Joan Heemskerk + Dirk Paesmans. JODI are highly recognized New Media artists who were early practioners of net.art, artware + art games.

Q: what is JODI's "%WRONG Browser" project?
A: JODI released "%WRONG Browser" a browser art or artware project in 2000 + 2001. released %WRONG Browsers in different versions or formats, demarcated by nationally specific top level domain (TLD) names, i.e. "CO.KR" the TLD for Korea. these formats or versions differ from 01 another in primarily aesthetic + formal ways but operate functionally + conceptually in very similar if not identical ways.

Q: what makes the .CO.KR version of JODI's %WRONG Browser project specifically Korean?
A: i don't have any idea but this question is 01 of the initial curiosities that instigated MY MINI AVI project.

Q: what is cyworld?
A: cyworld is social software system based in Korea that allows people to connect to each other, form Friend Of A Friend (FOAF) networks, keep diaries + decorate their individual mini-hompys (homepages) that are represented as rooms rendered in 2.5D (aka isometric views).

Q: is cyworld free?
A: yes + no. cyworld is free to join but activities such as decorating an individual mini-hompy costs acorns. acorns are units of internal cyworld money that can be purchased with external forms of nationally recognized currency.

Q: Do you speak Korean?
A: unfortunately no. all translations of English into Korean in MY MINI AVI as well as assistance in my life in cyworld are performed by Eun Sun Lee.

Q: is the audio in MY MINI AVI broken?
A: no.

Q: then why does it snd broken?
A: the Wobbulated videos are silent as is JODI's CO.KR version of their %WRONG Browser project. i took my Wobbulated CO.KR %WRONG Browser video outputs + reformatted the audio using the following process: Digital Video (DV) source materials were opened as .RAW files in Audacity which converted the DV compressed video into MP3 compressed audio. then i exported these audio files using WAV formatting + imported them into SoundHack to map the WAV files to the audio recordings of MY MINI AVI aka my miniature avatar's voice via SoundHack's Varispeed function. so what you are hearing is the digital video files interpreted as raw data + then reshaped to resemble the voice of MY MINI AVI.

Q: how did you manipulate your miniature avatar's voice?
A: i didn't, that's just how he speaks.

Q: why is your miniature avatar naked?
A: MY MINI AVI follows in the art hystorical traditional of the heroic nude. also, when you first join cyworld, you have no acorns (i.e. no money) + by default are dressed only in your underwear. i decided to set MY MINI AVI to an earlier default state of being, prior even to the acquisition of underwear in order to underscore the differences between MY MINI AVI as a free art project + cyworld as a commercial social software system.