Oil Painting "Screens and Tubes"

oi      This painting was inspired by an installation piece that I saw while reading the book "Living With Art".  The piece was called "TV Buddha"by Nam June Paik. The piece featured a Buddha statue which was sitting, looking at an image of it's self on a television screen. The Buddha was also being filmed, which was the source of it's own image on the TV.
        This is a very interesting idea, so I decided to explore it further in the context of the current NSA controversies.
        I also began thinking about America's love/hate relationship with television, which has now been transferred onto the new digital medias as well. I often see people complain about things like Facebook and teenagers who text in public. Television used to be called the "boob tube" implying that it is for stupid people or that it will make a person stupid. Modern society despises it's addiction to the "Tube" and now social media, accusing it of creating a mindless, antisocial state of zombiehood.
         Isn't it interesting though that an empty, quiet mind is in many ways held up as a virtue when it is seen in Buddhist meditation, which coincidentally many times is achieved by sitting, focusing upon some arbitrary point several feet in front of the meditator? Both the Tube medias and Buddhism seem to have a few interesting things in common. Another interesting coincidence is how they invalidate the physical experience, while placing an over-emphasis on the virtual (or spiritual).
        This makes me wonder if being "glued" to a screen, wether it be a tv or a computer, may be similar to meditation, and vice verse.

Nam June Paik. "TV Buddha" 1974, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.