“I also envisage the day when the collaboration of artist and engineer will progress into the unification of artist and engineer into one person. According to my past experience, the best results were achieved through accident and error. As you see, the transistor was discovered by accident. This means that the present computer age was the product of chance to a high degree. Therefore, if I give an order to an engineer, and if I don’t go through all the experiments myself (that is, the complicated process of trial and error), I will lose all these precious errors, I will only get what I want, and miss all the disappointment and surprises.”

from Marga Bijvoet, “Art as Inquiry, Toward New Collaborations Between Art, Science, and Technology”, Peter Lang, New York, 1997. She quoted from Jud Yalkut, “Art and Technology of Nam June Paik”, Arts Magazine, april 1968.

(with two pictures of Paik, his robot K-456, and amongst others Joseph Beuys, pictures from around 1964/65)