Dimensions / 49.3×49.5cm
Medium / Black & white photograph on baryta paper

In TV Bra for Living Sculpture, Moorman wears two miniature televisions encased in Plexiglass boxes attached to a set of vinyl straps, while playing the cello. Moorman debuted the piece on
May 17, 1969, in a five-hour performance at the opening of the exhibition TV as a Creative Medium, at the Howard Wise Gallery, New York. For the remainder of the exhibition that ran up to June 14, 1969, she performed for two hours every day. Video played on the screens of TV Bra varied from live broadcasts to live CCTV feeds of the audience to prerecorded video footage.
Moorman also distorted the television pictures by taping magnets to her wrists or altered them by capturing the cello sounds with a microphone and by transforming them into optical signals.32 Paik has called this work an example of “humanizing electronics and technology.” Specifically, “The real implied issue in ‘Art and Technology’ is not to make another scientific toy, but how to humanize the technology and the electronic medium, which is progressing rapidly—too rapidly. […]
TV Brassiere for Living Sculpture is also one sharp example to humanize electronics…and technology. By using TV as bra…the most intimate belonging of human being, we will demonstrate the human use of technology, and also stimulate viewers NOT for something mean but stimulate their fantasy to look for the new, imaginative and humanistic ways of using our technology.”33
As the artist notes, the use of TV as an object as intimate as a bra shows how the human use of technology. This work became the best known in Moorman’s repertoire along with TV Cello. It is notable for challenging sexual taboos in music and demonstrating Paik’s technical experimentation with TV.