In 1994, Nam June Paik created Music Box Based on Piano Piece Composed in Tokyo in 1954 for The Music Box Project, a commission of seventeen music boxes from different contemporary artists sponsored by the Swiss music box company Reuge. Paik, who was instrumental in establishing the video art genre, transposed an original score composed forty years earlier onto a Reuge 144-note music box mechanism. Inside the cabinet, a mini video recorder records a live feed of the music box, which is presented on the screen. By interlacing a contemporary audio-visual recording, a 200-year-old musical instrument, and a vintage television cabinet, Paik comments on temporality and the eventual obsoleteness of contemporary technology.

Adapted from

• Label text, 2015.

• Label text, Center for Creative Connections, "The Art of Communication," 2017.

• National Endowment for the Arts
  Explore Paik's works and impact on time-based media.

• DMA Uncrated
  Learn more about collector Dorace Fichtenbaum.