In the 1960s, Nam June Paik embraced the medium of television, and became the founding father of video art. His long and prolific relationship with electronic media began notably with the cellist Charlotte Moorman, in controversial performance works such as Opera Sextronique from 1967. Paik's oeuvre later included television sculpture, satellite art, robotic devices, and giant video walls with synthesized imagery pulsating from stacks of cathode-ray tubes.
Paik suggests that art should embrace the technologies of the information society. Paik presents himself as artist-shaman, synthesizing art and technology in an effort to exorcise the demons of a mass-consumer, technology obsessed society. Paik uses rejected media artifacts in his work, such as vintage television sets. His video works, with their liberal doses of "cybernated shock and catharsis," are poignantly cynical pieces that comment on an American techno-culture dominated by starry-eyed optimists.
(Source: http://www.w2vr.com/timeline/Paik.html)