Scattered Signals in Smoke: Rethinking Laser Light Through Nam June Paik’s Baroque Laser

A laser generates intense, coherent light by amplifying electromagnetic radiation within an optical cavity of reflective surfaces. Since the 1960s, it has expanded beyond medical and industrial use to enable optical signal transmission through fiber-optic cables, forming a foundational component of contemporary internet and communication infrastructures. This paper aims to examine Nam June Paik’s Baroque Laser (1995). Paik is an artist widely recognized for his large-scale installations composed of stacked analog television sets. I will challenge the assumption that perceives Paik only as a pioneer of video art within art history and turn attention to his malfunctioning, enigmatic, and understudied laser performance, seeking to reposition it within the methodology of elemental media studies and genealogy of thermal media for digital transmission. By focusing on the candle flame and cigarette smoke of the performance, this study examines how Paik transforms the materiality of smoke into the screen to enhance visibility of the light and aesthetically distorts the functionality of the laser, a technology initially developed for communication and military purposes during the Cold War. I examine how these elements disturb the pure and coherent nature of the laser that is devised not to tolerate errors. In addition, by demonstrating the conditions of its aging and malfunctioning decades later, not as an error or failure to be corrected but as a site of critical inquiry into the entropy, deterioration, and ephemerality of the artwork, my research demonstrates why Paik designated the laser as a utopian form of “post-video.”