Kamran Sadeghi - Disappearing Music (for Nam June Paik) (2023)

Kamran Sadeghi returns to LINE with a work utilizing the Wobbulator, a 1970s video synthesizer of the founder of video art, Nam June Paik. Sadeghi's previous LINE release was 2020's Loss Less (LINE_110).

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Soon after screening audiovisual works in the Seoul International Computer Music Festival in 2009, Kamran began his first artist residency at the Experimental Television Center (E.T.C.) in New York using the Nam June Paik’s Wobbulator—a video synthesizer made out of a modified black and white television monitor. A kind of prepared TV with its coils and tubes exposed.

In order to generate patterns you need to send it control voltage and the only way to record the image displayed is by rescanning the screen with a video camera. Inspired by the Wobbulator's minimalistic design and Paik’s own work with the physicality of sound, Kamran decided to forego traditional musical notation and create pulses, clicks and pops using the E.T.C. studios Doepfer A-100 system and Korg MS-20 synthesizer.

These sounds were used to activate the the Wobbulator and generate electromagnetic patterns. For 5 days Sadeghi lived inside of the E.T.C. studio full of cultural history, 50 years of artistic legacy and inventive electricity. This release contains selected parts recorded live in 2009, mixed in 2022 and shared for the first time.

"I think sound is time sequence. And then if it contains content, like narratives, then it becomes movie, theater... if music has no power to let you enjoy it without seeing, then it's not great music."
—Nam June Paik, 1983