Technological Catastrophe and the Robots of Nam June Paik

Abstract:This article argues that the difference between human labor and its robotic simulation lies in the human capacity to refuse to labor. To make this argument, the article examines Nam June Paik's Robot K-456 (1964)—an electronic sculpture that both performed and refusedto perform experimental music—in light of cybernetic robots since the Second World War. In addition to these robots, Paik's work also relates to their precedents in eighteenth-century musical automata, which, as incipient posthumans, had challenged the boundary between humans and machines. Drawing theories of the posthuman together with the critique of political economy, the article concludes that Paik's robot ultimately affirms that the capacity for self-negation is uniquely human by failing at its own self-destruction.