special report: art & technology

The engineer as catalyst: Billy Klüver on working with artists

illy Klüver has a lot in common mances drew an audience of over 10 000. view, that you could begin wondering with the more accomplished elec- Because of the enthusiasm generated by why engineering is practiced the way it trical engineers of his generation. “9 Evenings,” Klüver, fellow Bell engineer is—i.e., you might get turned on.” BHe has a Ph.D. from the Uni- Fred Waldhauer, and artists Robert Rausch- The “artist’s scientist,“ as The New York versity of California at Berkeley, is a veter- enberg and Robert Whitman went on to Times called him in 1965, has himself an of Bell Laboratories, has been an IEEE form Experiments in Art & Technology become an object of renewed interest to member since 1943, and holds several (E.A.T.), the first organization dedicated to artists and historians. In the past 12 patents. Unique to Klüver, however, is the uniting artists eager to use technology with months, Klüver has co-authored a well- almost surreal story of a quiet scientist, engineers equipped to provide it. received book of historic photographs (A thrust from the serenity of the lab into the E.A.T.’s first task was to attract engineers Day with Picasso, MIT Press, Cambridge, burgeoning art scene of New York City in who would collaborate with artists. Within Mass.), attended a festive homecoming the 1960s. two years, E.A.T. membership rolls grew to at Berkeley’s engineering department, His knowledge of technology, coupled over 4000 and the organization subse- received an honorary Doctorate in Fine with a deep-rooted interest in art, launched quently became the catalyst for much strik- Arts from New York City’s renowned him on a whirlwind tour of the tumultuous ing technological art. Parson’s School of Design ‘60s. The list of those with whom he has The ‘60s were a productive (now part of the New School collaborated embraces some of the 20th period in the history of art PAUL MILLER for Social Research), has been century’s most notable visual and perform- and technology, and Klüver’s Electronic interviewed for the BBC, and ing artists—Jean Tinguely, Robert Rausch- work was chronicled in The Publishing Editor has been asked to appear on enberg, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Merce New York Times, Wall Street countless panels and give Cunningham, John Cage, and others. Journal, Life, Newsweek, Art Forum and else- numerous lectures. Right now in his sub- Were it not for his well-chronicled pres- where. Not to be outdone, IEEE Spectrum’s urban home in Berkeley Heights, N.J., ence in the annals of art history, Klüver’s May 1969 issue examined E.A.T. and the where he and two assistants maintain the story would be difficult to believe. young Art & Technology Movement. [An mountain of archives that chronicle the Life magazine, though, fell short of the electronic version of the article appears 30-year history of the Art & Technology mark in a 1966 article that tagged him on Spectrum’s World Wide Web site at movement, Klüver wonders what all the “The Mr. Fix-It of kinetic art.” He was and www.spectrum.ieee.org and provides a fas- fuss is about. is far more than just a repair man. Most cinating view from the other end of the “I mean, can you imagine, a degree in memorably, he was the lead engineer and telescope.] fine arts,“ he said in a recent interview co-organizer of “9 Evenings: Theatre and In that report, staff writer Nilo Lind- with Spectrum. “I’m an engineer, not an Engineering,” a defining event in late gren sought to persuade engineers to get artist.“ Klüver, the technological guru of 20th century art. involved with the organization. “You need late 20th century art, made the statement “9 Evenings” resulted from a collabora- not be a Renaissance Man to apply for a with a great deal of pride in his profes- tion between 10 artists and more than 30 match with an artist. It won’t be all fun sion. Though rejecting any claims of engineers and scientists who integrated and games, although part of it will be, and being an artist himself, this engineer is as fascinating new technologies into works you might even end up doing something responsible for shaping the face of tech- of art. Held in 1966 at the 69th Regiment so useless from an engineering point of nological art as any painter or sculptor of Armory in New York City, the perfor- view, and so right from another point of this era. BILLY KLÜVER PHOTOGRAPH: SUE WRBICAN; B. KLÜVER & R. RAUSCHENBERG PHOTOGRAPH: PETER MOORE; PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION: MARC YANKUS

20 IEEE SPECTRUM JULY 1998

Hallowed ground to underground professor, Nobel prize winner in physics board Calypso [Cousteau’s ocean-going For Klüver, science has always been Hannes Alfvén, to produce a short ani- research vessel],“ he said, his eyes bright- paramount, whereas his interest in art was mated film about the motion of elec- ening at the memory. “My group at “just another form of intellectual activity,“ trons in electric and magnetic fields. Thomson had developed one of the first he said. He was born in Monaco in 1927 Later he presented the concept of high- underwater television cameras. It was quite and his family moved to Sweden immedi- level, educational films to Encyclopedia amazing back then. Cousteau used it to ately after. While an undergraduate at the Britannica, which did not know what to explore a cargo ship that had sunk 2000 Royal Institute of Technology in Stock- make of it, since no film geared to an years ago just outside Marseilles.“ holm, he joined the Film Society across audience with such knowledge had ever At age 26, after one year in Paris, he town at the humanities faculty of Stock- been made before. emigrated to the United States. “I always holm University, an unprecedented act After graduating, he first took a job knew I wanted to come here,“ he said. “I for an engineering student. His deep love with Compagnie Générale Thomson- saw the movies and wanted to see for my- of film eventually led to his election as Houston in Paris, where he worked on a self.“ He was certain he would get a job president of the Film Society. cavity-type electron-beam device slated to with the Radio Corporation of America or He desired to merge his two loves, join the radio transmitters atop the Eiffel Bell Laboratories; but his arrival in 1954 film and science, by producing high- Tower. He continued to pursue the merger coincided with the McCarthy hearings level educational films, something that of film and science by spending some time and the questioning of research centers had not yet been done. For his senior in Marseilles, working for famed oceanic about possibly Communist, “un-Ameri- thesis, he received permission from his scientist Jacques Cousteau. “I got to go on can“ activities. Being a foreigner, he de-

JEAN TINGUELY 1925-1991, born in Fribourg, Switzerland Homage to New York, 1960 Mixed media

[1] Enlisting the help of Harold Hodges at Bell Laboratories, we built a timer that controlled eight electrical circuits that closed successively, triggering an event that contributed to the fate of the machine. Motors started; smoke generated by mixing titanium tetrachloride and ammonia billowed out of a bassinet; a piano began to play and was later set on fire; small- er machines shot out from the sculpture and ran into the audi- ence. Harold devised a scheme to cut through supporting members and then embed resis- tors in Wood’s metal, which was used to hold the members together. When the circuits closed, the overheated resistors would melt the Wood’s metal and the members would col- lapse. The whole thing was over in 27 minutes.

All captions in this article were written by Billy Klüver. PHOTOGRAPH: AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTO ARTWORK © JEAN TINGUELY

22 IEEE SPECTRUM JULY 1998 cided to avoid the risks and instead to assistance in finding discarded bicycle was the only one of Jean’s friends who stall for time by working for his Ph.D. wheels. This strange request would forev- had a regular job, so I was the only one Under the supervision of professor of er change Klüver’s life. with a car,“ he said. electrical engineering John Whinnery, It started simply enough. Klüver Klüver finished up at Berkeley in just two ‘I want to blow it up’ recalled driving his huge Chevrolet con- years and seven months—a speed record Artist Tinguely actually met engineer vertible heaped with rusty bicycle wheels for a Ph.D. back then. In 1958, he found Klüver in Paris in 1953, and came to New collected from the basement of a New employment in the Communication York City in 1960 for his first U.S. gallery Jersey bicycle shop. He and Tinguely Sciences Division at Bell Laboratories, show. Impressed by the success of that pulled over near the museum’s garden, Murray Hill, N.J. His days were spent opening, the Museum of Modern Art and threw the junk over the fence— researching backward-wave magnetron invited him to build a sculpture in its out- which was lower then, he observed. amplifiers, linear tubes, and small-signal door garden, on West 54th Street. Klüver Little by little, things grew more com- power conservation theorems. At night, recalled, “They had no idea what they plicated. Outside the train window, on he hung out at artistic events. When were getting into.“ the way to visit Klüver in New Jersey, Swiss kinetic sculptor Jean Tinguely was Nor did he. Technological assistance Tinguely had seen vast suburban gar- inspired to build a large mechanical sculp- was not at all what he expected to supply. bage dumps and asked to be driven ture that would ultimately destroy itself Involvement by way of navigating the there. “We went and walked around for (an embodiment of what he thought New streets of New York City and helping hours, loading up all these things he York City was doing), he asked Klüver for with transportation seemed more likely. “I wanted—baby carriages, etc.—all that

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG b. 1925, Port Arthur, Texas Oracle, 1965 Mixed media

[2] Rauschenberg asked me to collaborate on an interactive environment where the tem- perature, sound, smell, lights, etc., would change as the viewer moved through it. This was clearly impossible with 1960s technology, and the idea boiled down to a sculptural sound environment of five sculptures made from objects Rauschenberg had found in the streets, where the sounds came from five AM radios and the audience could vary the vol- ume and scan rate of each radio. Harold Hodges [see Fig. 1] came up with a solution for the scanning that has remained largely unchanged over the years: the tuning dial was turned by a small variable-speed DC

PHOTOGRAPH: RUDOLPH BURCKHART ARTWORK © ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG/LICENSED BY VAGA motor, and the visitor controlled the speed of the motor. Since Rauschenberg wanted no wires be- tween the sculptures, we designed a system in which we put all five AM radios and the control panel in the ‘staircase,’ (bottom left) and then the output from the radios was retransmitted by small transmitters to receivers, amplifiers and speakers in each of the other pieces (top left). In the early sys- tems, interference between the control sig- nals from the homemade AM transmitters and the AM radio signals generated a night- mare of noise. In the summer of 1964 the technology caught up with us, and we used the first crystal-controlled fully transistorized FM wireless microphone systems. Oracle is now in the permanent collection of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris; and the latest upgrade of the system made in 1997 uses DC stepper motors and the latest Sennheiser wireless FM transmitters and receivers. © PETER MOORE/LICENSED BY VAGA

MILLER — THE ENGINEER AS CATALYST: BILLY KLÜVER ON WORKING WITH ARTISTS 23 stench sticking to your clothes. I can liked spectacle; it was his character. He the young engineer to collaborate with still smell it,“ Klüver remembered. liked to see how people reacted and him on what would become what art his- “We took all that stuff to the museum, what happened.“ torians now consider one of his most walked right through the front door, con- From that collaboration he learned to inventive works, Oracle [Fig. 2]. tinued to the garden, and started building. listen to the artist and provide him with as The newspaper article also attracted the Tinguely was an amazing structural engi- many choices as possible. He also learned attention of John Pierce, Klüver’s supervi- neer, no training at all. For him, building another important lesson, that is, when to sor in the Bell Labs Communication it was the easy part. The problem came in let go. “I knew that I could solve the prob- Sciences Division and now Visiting Pro- how to destroy it.“ lems, if I took a day, but the curtain had to fessor of Music, Emeritus, at the Stanford The resulting work was entitled Homage go up. Artists still complain that engineers University Center for Computer Research to New York [Fig. 1]. On 17 March 1960, never learn that the curtain must go up.“ in Music and Acoustics. Said Klüver: after a 27-minute performance, it col- As the firemen were dowsing the “After Homage, Pierce came running in my lapsed and burst into flames, just as it was flames, reporters raced to get their stories office. He had no idea what I was doing— designed to do. to press. The next day’s New York Journal- we were doing work on Bell Labs time, Looking back, Klüver told Spectrum, American headline was “Art Goes Boom.“ with Bell Labs equipment, even Bell Labs “Some of the sculpture’s components didn’t The media attention sparked by the event staff! I thought I was fired. So Pierce work, of course. I wanted to run up and was enough to stir the interest of the comes running in and says, ‘There’s only fix some things, but Jean said, ‘Don’t other artists who had attended. For one, one thing wrong. Why wasn’t I invited?’ “ touch.’ He was happy with the result. He Robert Rauschenberg immediately asked This positive attitude led Klüver to

JASPER JOHNS b.1930, Augusta, Georgia Field Painting, 1963-64 Oil on canvas, with objects

[3] Jasper Johns asked if he could make a painting with a neon letter in it. What was new was Johns wanted no cords to the painting. We needed a bat- tery-powered, high-voltage supply, but to stack up batteries attached to 700 V would have been messy, dangerous and impractical. So we started out with 12 V of rechargeable bat- teries. A multivibrator circuit converted the dc volt- age from the batteries into ac. Transformed into 700 V and then rectified, it powered the neon letter. All the technical equipment was mounted behind the painting. We were able to provide enough energy to power the letter, but it had to be redone. I had made it blue, and Jasper insisted that R was a red letter. © PETER MOORE/LICENSED BY VAGA © JASPER JOHNS/LICENSED BY VAGA

24 IEEE SPECTRUM JULY 1998 extend his assistance to all the artists who agreed to help, and the two invited their The events were scheduled for October came to him with requests after Homage. friends to participate. Many of these 1966, and during the summer, over 40 Jasper Johns, for one, wanted a neon letter artists, choreographers, and composers engineers were at work on the technology in the middle of a painting with no wires had been developing and presenting that would bring the artists’ visions to life. [Fig. 3], and Andy Warhol wanted light avant-garde works, under the title, As the artists’ desires were hampered by bulbs to float [Fig. 4]. After six years of col- “Happenings,“ in New York City’s Judson neither practicality nor reality, the engi- laboration between the artists and Klüver, Memorial Church, in Washington Square. neers rose to their seemingly impossible re- not to mention the growth of public inter- Klüver had begun to recruit fellow engi- quests by resorting to developmental tech- est, the time seemed ripe for a major exhi- neers from Bell Laboratories to assist the nologies. The list of devices used reads like bition. With the support of Bell Labs, artists when the Swedish project folded in a chronology of engineering achievement. Klüver and a team of over 40 engineers set the summer of 1966. Undaunted, the In the 1969 Spectrum article, editor Lind- the stage for “9 Evenings: Theatre and group continued to develop their large- gren summarized the artists’ unusual de- Engineering,“ and the later launch of E.A.T. scale performance art pieces, and decided mands: “The engineers provided…infrared to present them in Manhattan instead. television for Rauschenberg, direct access to 8000 hours for ‘9 Evenings‘ Incidentally, the facility chosen to host the sounds [from] all over New York for Cage A music society in Stockholm wanted performances was the 69th Regiment (he wanted sounds, too, from outer space), to present a Festival of Art and Tech- Armory, the same building that had a sound [environment] for [choreographer nology in 1966 and asked Klüver to orga- housed the famous 1913 show that intro- Steve] Paxton, snowflakes that went up- nize a U.S. contribution. Rauschenberg duced modern European art to Americans. ward for [Oyvind] Fahlström, and a pro- © ANDY WARHOL/LICENSED BY ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY

ANDY WARHOL 1930–1987, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Silver Clouds, 1966 Scotchpak, helium

[4] One day in the summer of 1964, Andy Warhol asked me if I could make him a floating light bulb. My colleagues at Bell Laboratories and I made some calculations and discovered that it was not possible with existing battery technology, though it certainly would be today. A colleague found a material called Scotchpak, which the U.S. Army had used to vacuum-pack sandwiches. The material was relatively impermeable to helium and could be heat sealed. Andy asked if he could make clouds. While we were figuring out how to heat-seal curves, Andy took the material and simply folded it over and made his Silver Clouds. When they were shown in 1966, the heat gradient between the floor and the ceiling created a slight pressure differential, and with paper clips as ballast, we balanced them so they would float halfway between the ceiling and the floor. © PETER MOORE/LICENSED BY VAGA

MILLER — THE ENGINEER AS CATALYST: BILLY KLÜVER ON WORKING WITH ARTISTS 25 portional control system for [David] control lights, sound, and movement of By the time the events were over, upward Tudor, with which it was possible to modi- objects at a distance.“ Engineer Fred of 10 000 people had attended. Most had fy lights and sounds by the movement of a Waldhauer devised a proportional con- mixed reactions. Said Klüver, “We had a flashlight over a photocell control panel.“ trol system for “moving sound around high-powered public relations team and Some engineers designed systems the speakers mounted in the armory they got imaginative stories into the press. for use by more than one artist. Klüver and for varying the level of sound in People came down there expecting to see and his colleagues contrived “a local- each speaker.“ [Figures 5–7 show three miracles. But, of course, we had no miracles area FM transmitting system used to of these works.] to perform. They thought they would see

LUCINDA CHILDS b.1940 New York City Vehicle, 1966 Performance art, mixed media

[5] Peter Hirsch developed a Doppler sonar for Lucinda Childs. Three red buckets swung inside a simple scaffolding, on the periphery of which were mounted three 70-kHz ultrahigh-fre- quency sound transmitters generating inaudi- ble sound beams, which were reflected from the moving buckets. The signal reflected from a bucket moving in the ultrasonic beam had a slightly different frequency than the original signal. The fre- quency-shifted signal was picked up by the microphone next to the ultrasonic transmitters and mixed with the original 70-kHz signal. The resulting beat frequency falls in the audible range; it was amplified and fed through the speakers in the armory. The resulting sound was like wind blowing through a forest. © PETER MOORE/LICENSED BY VAGA

ALEX HAY b.1930 Vahico, Florida Grass Field, 1966 Performance art, mixed media

[6] Alex Hay wanted to accompany his performance with body sounds like muscle activity, eye movements, and brain waves. Bill Kaminski, in col- laboration with Fred Waldhauer and Cecil Coker, built a battery-driven low-noise differential amplifier which had a peak gain of 80 dB from 1/2 Hz to 10 Hz. The whole unit, batteries and all, fit into a 25-by-75-by-125-mm box. To do this in 1966 was no mean feat. The signal from the differential amplifier was fed into a voltage-con- trolled oscillator, then to a transmit- ter, which sent the sound to the speakers. Electrodes were placed on Alex’s head and body, and all the equipment was attached to a plastic plate fastened on Alex’s back. Incidentally, the artists’ perfor- mances at ‘9 Evenings’ were the first to use projection television as a dra- matic element. PHOTOGRAPH © PETER MOORE/LICENSED BY VAGA; ARTWORK © ALEX HAY

26 IEEE SPECTRUM JULY 1998 people floating in the air and everything. and more than 80 of them had immediate Technology in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Projects of When they got there and saw it, they were requests for technical assistance. The main this nature have not only loaded Klüver bored to death. They had no idea that this task facing Klüver and the fledgling organi- with more responsibilities and commit- was what contemporary art was. But these zation was to find engineers willing to work ments, they have compelled him to reex- days, people come up to me on the street with artists. Klüver’s strategy involved talks, amine, through 71-year-old eyes, what he and say ‘I was there,’ and tell me how impor- lectures, visits to corporate laboratories, has learned. tant ‘9 Evenings’ was for them.“ and in March 1967, a booth at the annual While attendance far exceeded what IEEE convention where artists made a pitch The value is in the collaboration Klüver had anticipated, so, too, did the to involve engineers. Though responsible for the merging of time bestowed on the project by Bell en- “I was scared,“ Klüver said. “The amazing such unlike fields, Klüver accepts the fact gineers—over 8000 man-hours, in thing was that it’s possible for artists and that this form of art does not appeal to Klüver’s estimate. Nonetheless, Bell Labs scientists to talk together at all.“ Yet talking everybody. In a 1966 Life magazine article, management was still bent on encourag- together and working together dissipated he was quoted as saying, “All of the art ing him. “The number of midnight equip- the fear on both sides. Three years later, projects that I have worked on have at ment requisitions was quite large,“ he said E.A.T. boasted 4000 members all over the least one thing in common; from an engi- with a grin. “Years later I asked John country, including 2000 artists and 2000 neer’s point of view they are ridiculous.“ Pierce, ‘Why did you let me do all this, engineers, and its Technical Services Match- But Klüver feels that while the technolo- get away with it?’ Pierce replied, ‘There ing System put artists with technical re- gy needed by the artists might often be was too much energy there. To stop it quests directly in touch with engineers who “trivial“ from the engineers‘ point of view, would have been too destructive.’ “ could work with them. The responsibilities applying their technical knowledge in a For those involved, “9 Evenings“ was a placed on Klüver were so large that he left new environment and in a new way provid- launching pad to notoriety in the art world. Bell Labs in 1968 to run E.A.T.full time. ed the difficulty and challenge. He loved So much enthusiasm was generated among Now, almost 30 years later, Klüver is the excitement of working with the artists, the artists and engineers working on the delighted by the renewed interest in E.A.T. some of whom have come to be known as project, that Rauschenberg and Klüver and “9 Evenings.“ Efforts are under way on Pop artists, although this was not the term immediately scheduled a meeting for artists a $250 000 project to preserve the original that Klüver preferred. “I would’ve called in December 1966 to announce the forma- 16-mm films of the event and to convert them the factualists,“ he said, “because that tion of E.A.T., and find out how much them into videotape (Billy’s love of film is is what they did. They dealt in reality and interest there was in the New York art com- still paying off). Through the use of a more fact. But factualist is a hard word to say.“ munity in an organization that would foster recent medium, the San Jose Museum of Perhaps that is why engineering, the sci- collaborative efforts between artists and Art, in California, is preparing an interac- ence of turning imagination into fact, engineers. More than 300 artists attended, tive CD ROM on the history of Art & played a more than transitory role.

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG b.1925 Port Arthur, Texas Open Score, 1966 Performance art, video

[7] In the work, a man and woman play a game of tennis. Each time they hit the ball, a small specially designed radio transmitter embedded in the rac- quet handle transmitted the vibration of the racquet strings to a receiver, which was then amplified and fed to the speakers around the armory, and a loud bong was heard. For each bong, a light went out, and the game ended when the armory was in complete darkness. With the use of infrared light and infrared-sensitive television cam- eras, images of a group of 500 people engaged in simple movements cued by Rauschenberg from the balcony were projected on three large screens sus- pended in front of the audience. The audience could feel that the people were there but could not see them except on the screens. The infrared camera tubes came from Japan, since they were classified as secret by the military in this country. PHOTOGRAPH © PETER MOORE; ARTWORK © ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG/LICENSED BY VAGA

MILLER — THE ENGINEER AS CATALYST: BILLY KLÜVER ON WORKING WITH ARTISTS 27 Originally, Klüver believed the engi- electronics shops. Two complete systems artists—that has Billy Klüver thinking neer should simply work for the artist. were built and rejected as technically inade- about his legacy, particularly as it relates to “Once I gave a talk,“ Klüver remembered, quate, before we finished it in 1965.“ maintaining the technology inherent in this “and made the point that an engineer He laughed, “When I would install it in type of work. Of great concern to Klüver is should just be another tool for the artist. museums over the years, I had to lie on what will happen years from now, when the But Bob [Rauschenberg] very specifically the floor to get it going. You’re trying to art has outlived the life of the tubes and said, ‘No! It has to be a collaboration.’ I solve borderline difficult problems alone, switches. Will the collaboration between immediately understood what Bob was on the floor. You’re not in a lab, you don’t artists and engineers evolve into a collabo- saying. The one-to-one collaboration have the tools. And even today, when the ration between curators and engineers? between two people from different fields value of a piece that started out a couple Klüver hopes so. “The museums need to always holds the possibility of producing of hundred dollars is now worth millions, have special curators, engineers who work something new and different that neither I still face the same situation.“ for the museum to take care of things 10 or of them could have done alone.“ But Klüver has never hesitated to up- 15 years from now. Curators will have to The sculpture Oracle, the first collabora- grade Oracle‘s technology so as to preserve try and understand the technology, and tion between Klüver and Rauschenberg, is the artist’s intentions. This year, he asked an engineers will have to learn how to handle considered by many art historians to be one engineer who has worked with E.A.T. since fragile artworks.“ The task will not be an of the late 20th century’s greatest works “9 Evenings,“ Per Biorn, to design and build easy one on either side. [again, Fig. 2]. Its permanent home is the a new system for Oracle. “We’ve updated the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and its technology several times. It will be updated ‘If it works, we’re invisible’ recent showing as part of a Rauschenberg to last forever…I hope.“ The 1969 Spectrum article presented an retrospective in Houston made Klüver All things considered, it is probably the optimistic view of the future of E.A.T., be- think about its history: “It took about three art world’s current interest in Oracle—and ginning with the “orchestrating of a large- years to finish the first system. It seems like the historical interest in the early days of scale international collaboration for Expo I spent most of my time in endless lines in Art & Technology by up-and-coming ‘70,“ the World Exposition in Osaka, Japan.

Air Spotlights Revolving mirror Winch Catwalk

Winch light Vacuum air

Right airtight Reinforced structure glass-fiber shelf Mirror dome Fog pipes (flexible airtight structure) Moving sculpture terrace Mechanical equipment

Stair well Laser Glass Clam Tunnel Handset Control Tunnel entrance floor room exit speaker console distribution DRAWING: JIM HANKARD, BASED ON ORIGINAL ART BY E.A.T. E.A.T. (ROBERT BREER, FROSTY MYERS, DAVID TUDOR, and ROBERT WHITMAN, designers) Pavilion, 1970 Architecture

[8] E.A.T. carried out a project to into a dark clam-shaped room lit design and program the Pepsi only by moving patterns of laser Pavilion for Expo ‘70 in Osaka, light, created by a laser deflec- Japan. Four core artists, Robert tion system which used the four Breer, Frosty Myers, David Tudor, colors from a krypton laser and E.A.T. and Robert Whitman initiated vibrating mirrors activated from the design, which finally brought the sound system in the mirror David Tudor designed the be moved at varying speeds lin- together 63 U.S. and Japanese dome. Climbing the stairs, the sound system with 32 inputs, early across the dome and in artists, engineers, and scientists. visitor entered the main space of sound modulation systems, and circles around the dome, or it Above is a cross section of the the Pavilion, a 27.5-meter-diame- 37 speakers arranged in a could be shifted abruptly from Pavilion. The visitor entered ter 210-degree spherical mirror rhombic grid on the dome any one speaker to any other through a tunnel and descended made of aluminized Mylar. behind the mirror. Sound could speaker. The lights and sound

28 IEEE SPECTRUM JULY 1998 In the 1970s Klüver, working closely with 25–30 of the artists to the engineers he through to the engineering department. I artist Robert Whitman, oversaw E.A.T. knows will work with artists. When asked did finally get to speak to members of their branching out into projects in education why, Klüver replied that many artists research group, who considered the idea and developing countries. More recently, called before they had thought the pro- and reported that the answer was no, liquid and even with the “9 Evenings“ film ject through. “If they have made some crystals are gray and not available in color. restoration project, the importance of the effort to solve the problem themselves,“ A high-ranking Samsung official in the E.A.T. organization has waned somewhat. he said, “and it gets down to a purely United States called me back several days Today, much of what was once cutting- technical issue, where the answer is not later, suspicious, saying, ‘What did you real- edge technology is now within easy reach available by other means, then I contact ly want?’ As I explained the reason for my of the artists themselves. In effect, technol- an engineer. Otherwise, I figure they’re a question, I realized that E.A.T. can still act ogy itself has lessened the need for collabo- kook and I hang up the phone.“ as a useful intermediary for the artist.“ ration, though not eliminated it entirely. Needless to say, he always answers calls His role in the art world notwithstand- This pleases Klüver immensely. “In the first from Rauschenberg, who recently asked if it ing, Klüver rejects the title of artist, though E.A.T. newsletter,“ he remembered, “we said were possible to paint with colored liquid he is viewed as one by many artists. To that if we were successful, we would disap- crystals. It seems he had been commissioned this day he expounds the theory first put pear. We would disappear because if we to paint his interpretation of the Apocalypse forward by Rauschenberg: that the true were successful, there would be no need for on a window behind the main altar in a new nature of Art & Technology lies in collab- the functions of E.A.T. in society. It would pilgrimage church near Foggia, Italy, and he oration, not consultation. be perfectly natural for an artist to be able wanted the image to be invisible until it was “Engineers are not artists, and artists to contact an engineer him or herself.“ turned on during services. can’t do their own engineering. Artists E.A.T. (still a nonprofit organization, “I traced the liquid-crystal material to and engineers are separate individuals, though with a much less formal structure Samsung Korea,“ Klüver said. “They kept and if they work together, something will than in its heyday) still receives some 300 sending me to the sales department. It was come out of it that neither can expect. calls per year, but Klüver connects only very difficult, even as an engineer, to get That’s the quote I want to die with.“ N E.A.T. could either be pre-pro- around at less than a meter a image and see it from all sides. structure, there was no need for grammed or controlled in real minute, emitting sound. The two In this view of the mirror dome, cumbersome air locks. time by the artists from a con- light towers are part of Frosty you can see the real image The floor was divided into 10 sole at one side of the dome. Myers’ “Light Frame“ sculpture. reflection of the back of the areas made up of different The artists conceived of this white hat of the person wearing materials, such as Astroturf, space as performance area that [On the photo of the interior, the white hat and pointing. rough wood, slate, tile, asphalt. could be used by many visiting above] The mirror dome shows Our architect John Pearce Through handsets, like the one artists during Expo ‘70. the real image created by the devised an ingenious way the held by the boy in the photo convex Mylar mirror. This optical Mylar mirror could be fitted above, visitors could hear specif- [On the photograph of the exte- effect—of producing a real inside an airtight cage structure. ic sounds on each floor material. rior, left] The roof was covered image in a spherical mirror— A slight vacuum of less than On the tile floor: horses‘ hooves by a water vapor cloud sculp- resembles that of a hologram. 1/1000 of an atmosphere, which and shattering glass; on the ture, designed by Fujiko Nakaya. The difference is that because of could be handled by a couple of Astroturf: ducks, frogs, cicadas, And on the terrace are seven of the size of our mirror, a specta- good-sized fans, would be suffi- and lions roaring. These sounds Robert Breer’s “Floats,” 2-meter- tor looking at another person’s cient to hold up the mirror. By were transmitted from wire high sculptures which moved image could walk around the having a negative pressure air loops embedded in the floor.

MILLER — THE ENGINEER AS CATALYST: BILLY KLÜVER ON WORKING WITH ARTISTS 29