“Video Flag is an important example of Paik’s more recent work composed of a series of sculptural television constructions or walls of TVs. In 1982 Paik created Tricolor Vidéo for the Musée national d’art moderne, Paris, using television images to form a configuration of the French flag. In 1985-86 he used the American flag as the basis for three sculptures: Video Flag X (Chase Manhattan Bank collection), Video Flag Y (The Detroit Institute of Arts), and Video Flag Z (Los Angeles County Museum of Art).”^[1]

[img src: Edward A. Shanken, Art and Eelectronic Media, p.71]

The image is Video Flag Y  “that use the vernacular medium of television to recreate the stars and stripes of the American flag, […]. The work employs Paik’s signature video editing, with fast-paced edits and psychedelic effects produced with the Paik-Abe video-synthethizer. Its compulsive, nervous flickering is as overwhelming as the media culture it represents. Paik also used groups of altered television sets to recreate the French flag in Tricolor Vidéo, for the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris in 1982. Around 1960 […] Paik made his first ‘prepared’ television sculptures around 1962. These sculptural configurations were famously shown at his 1963 exhibition, ‘Exposition of Music-Electronic Television’ at the Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, Germany.”[2]

The video below is the Video Flag exhibiton in 1996, which has shown a large television display consisting of 70 video screens with references to American politics and culture.

[1] http://www.dicea.unifi.it/~sbert/guglielmi/ArchIII2005-2006/nam%20june%20paik1.pdf

[2] Edward A. Shanken, Art and Eelectronic Media, p.70