Dimensions / 30.4×40.2cm
Medium / Black & white photograph on baryta paper

Taken by Manfred Montwé, there are photographs of experimental televisions featured in Nam June Paik’s first solo show Exposition of Music – Electronic Television held in Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal in March 1963. The televisions may be divided into three categories. Firstly, with televisions whose inner circuitry is manipulated to interfere normal workings of signals, the same TV program broadcast are disturbed by negative images, sinusoidal oscillations, and horizontal and vertical stripes. The second group of televisions is connected to external devices by which the audience is led to participate in making images. Step on a pedal switch or make sound in front of a microphone, and the television screen creates dots of light like sparks; a tape recorder and a radio hooked up to television sets feed sound into image responding to the wavelength of the music and the volume of the radio. Thirdly, there are a couple of televisions out of order, which Paik simply brought to the gallery. In one television laid on its side, a single vertical white line runs through the middle of the screen; the other television set lies face-down showing not the screen but its brand name ‘Rembrandt Automatic.’ Montwé recalled that images on the television monitors ran past rapidly, kept changing constantly, or remained unstable so that it was technically hard to capture them photographically.