Untitled (Red Hand)

1965

Buys his first Sony video equipment

He buys Sony video equipment and for the first time can shoot and record his own video: the first was a recording of the traffic jam caused by Pope Paul VI’s motorcade, which he showed to friends that evening at the Cafe a Go-Go. Other accounts say he bought the combined TCV-2010 unit with the first consumer videotape recorder, the CV-2000, and that the portable Portapak appeared only in 1967.

1965

First solo exhibition in the United States

The show “Electronic Art” at the Bonino Gallery in New York is Paik’s first solo exhibition in America.

1965

Married: Shigeko Kubota

1967

Charlotte Moorman is arrested over “Opera Sextronique”

Moorman is arrested for performing topless in Paik’s “Opera Sextronique”; throughout this period Paik aims to bring music up to speed with art and literature and to make sex an acceptable theme.

1969–1970

Builds a video synthesizer with the engineer Shuya Abe

At WGBH in Boston, Paik and Shuya Abe build the first model of a video synthesizer that produces abstract images; Paik uses it to accompany rock and roll in “Video Commune” and to illustrate Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto. Other accounts date the synthesizer to 1973.