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.