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Nam June Paik «Participation TV»
Nam June Paik, «Participation TV», 1963 – 1966
Photography | © Nam June Paik


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 Nam June Paik
«Participation TV»

In 1963, «Participation TV I» passed the qualifying rounds at the «Exposition of Music—Electronic Television» exhibition in Wuppertal [where, in the case of a few devices, acoustic signals already determined the television image]. [«Participation TV I»] concerns a purely acoustic-oriented type of «Participation TV,» with an integrated microphone. The later version serves a television showing in the middle of its screen a colored bundle of lines which explosively spread out to form bizarre-looking line formations the moment someone speaks into the microphone or produces any other type of sound. Depending on the sound’s inherent quality or volume, the signals are intensified by a sound-frequency amplifier to produce an endless variety of line formations which never seem to repeat themselves or be in any way predictable.
(Source: Edith Decker, Paik Video, Cologne, 1988, p. 64)