DescriptionThis dissertation is about the influences of Nam June Paik’s musical career in the 1950s over his video art in the following decades. Paik is remembered more as a technology-savvy video artist than as a musicologist and musical composer and his active involvement in New Music and avant-garde musician circles in the mid- to late-1950s. This dissertation points to the fact that the artist’s philosophy of music as a musician developed into the invention of video as an art medium. His musical objective was not simply to produce music but to redefine what music is and to challenge conventional notions of music. Through his incessant quest for an answer to the question, what is music?, Paik established music of his own invention, which evolved into multimedia art. After a decade of active participation in the discussion of modern music as a musical composer and musician, Paik held his first solo show, “Exposition of Music-Electronic Television,” at Galerie Parnass, Wuppertal, in 1963, in which he showcased a series of television art wired to be visually manipulated according to audio input. This show was a watershed for Paik’s career, as it propelled him into electronic image manipulation through his exploration of music, hence essentially foregrounding Paik’s creation of video art. Before he arrived at this unique combination and visual and audio, he delved into two major components of modern music: one was the idea of Gesamkunstwerk, a term that describes the synthesis of various genres of arts,professed by Richard Wagner and the other was the cutting edge technologies for electronic music in the 1950s. This dissertation addresses that the interesting marriage of the two led Paik to discover the visual aspect of his musical compositions, which expanded his music horizon and enabled him to push the envelope for unique music of his own that subsequently led to the invention of video art.