The version On Being Invisible (1976-77) that appeared on vinyl from Music Gallery Editions (with the cover designed by George Manupelli) was from a live performance that took place in February of 1977 at the Music Gallery, Toronto. The recording included two tracks a bit longer than 20 min, marked with Part I and II subtitles. These were excerpted from longer performances. During the concert, David Rosenboom used self-designed equipment for brain signal analysis combined with a Princeton Applied Research Correlation Function Computer and an Interdata mini-computer interfaced with electronic hardware custom-made for him by Don Buchla.

The exploratory intent driving On Being Invisible I (1976-77) was finding out if it was possible to see signals in EEG representing how the human mind parses and organizes musical sequences, creating structures – ideologues, or forms stored in memory. Rosenboom was interested in seeing if the signal can represent how attention shifts from one phenomenon to another. He was interested in the changes, or parsing points, guiding the formation of auditory gestalts in the brain when well-differentiated auditory events occur. (This interest in the perceptual structure created by the central engine of the nervous system was partially inspired by the temporal gestalt theory of James Tenney.)

Attempting to understand better the meaning and functioning of auditory evoked responses/event-related potentials in the brain, in their connection to music, Rosenboom was looking for indicators of shifts of attention in the electroencephalogram and the temporal form auditory processing takes ,when sound travels from the ear to brain. So, the greater ambition of the OBI I design was recording event-related potentials and creating a self-organizing musical piece based on the idea of a biocybernetics paradigm – a feedback loop between signal-computer/processor-listener/performer – all affecting each other and provoking change in a chain.

Putting it simply – his question was: how does attention function in creating the perceived structure of music? Аnd vice versa, how can learning to volitionally re-direct attention in various ways affect sonic output produced by a wired-in brainwave performer? In On Being Invisible, the performer chooses when to act invisibly as a part of a larger biocybernetic feedback loop and when to initiate change through shifting attention.