PROOF1 2/6/20 @ 6pm BN / MM Please return to: by BIG IN JAPAN 40 | MAR 2020 MAR | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG AT THE 1970 WORLD’S FAIR FAIR WORLD’S 1970 THE AT HOW ART, TECH, AND PEPSICO THEN CLASHED TECH, COLLABORATED, ART, HOW BY W. PATRICK M PATRICK W. BY CRAY c SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | MAR 2020 MAR | 41 PHOTOGRAPH BY Firstname Lastname RK MM BP EV GZ AN DAS EG ES HG JK MEK PER SKM SAC TSP WJ EAB SH JNL MK (PDF) (PDF) (PDF) (PDF) (PDF) (PDF) (PDF) Big in Japan I. The Fog and The Floats ON 18 MARCH 1970, a former Japanese princess stood at the tion. To that end, Pepsi directed close to center of a cavernous domed structure on the outskirts of Osaka. US $2 million (over $13 million today) to With a small crowd of dignitaries, artists, engineers, and busi- E.A.T. to create the biggest, most elaborate, ness executives looking on, she gracefully cut a ribbon that teth- and most expensive art project of its time. ered a large red balloon to a ceremonial Shinto altar. Rumbles of Perhaps it was inevitable, but over the thunder rolled out from speakers hidden in the ceiling. As the 18 months it took E.A.T. to design and balloon slowly floated upward, it appeared to meet itself in mid- build the pavilion, Pepsi executives grew air, reflecting off the massive spherical mirror that covered the increasingly concerned about the group’s walls and ceiling. vision. And just a month after the opening, With that, one of the world’s most extravagant and expensive the partnership collapsed amidst a flurry multimedia installations officially opened, and the attendees of recriminating letters and legal threats. turned to congratulate one another on this successful collab- Despite this inglorious end, the partici- orative melding of art, science, and technology. Underwritten pants considered the pavilion a triumph. by PepsiCo, the installation was the beverage company’s signal contribution to Expo ’70, the first international exposition to be The pavilion was born during a backyard held in an Asian country. conversation in the fall of 1968 between A year and a half in the making, the Pepsi Pavilion drew eager David Thomas, vice-president in charge crowds and elicited effusive reviews. And no wonder: The pavilion of Pepsi’s marketing, and his neighbor, was the creation of Experiments in Art and Technology—E.A.T.—an Robert Breer, a sculptor and filmmaker influential collective of artists, engineers, technicians, and scien- who belonged to the E.A.T. collective. tists based in New York City. Led by Johan Wilhelm “Billy” Klüver, Pepsi had planned to contract with Dis- an electrical engineer at Bell Telephone Laboratories, E.A.T. at ney to build its Expo ’70 exhibition, as it its peak had more than a thousand members and enjoyed gener- had done for the 1964 World’s Fair in New ous support from corporate donors and philanthropic founda- York City. Some Pepsi executives were, ART MEETS TECH: Artist Fujiko Nakaya and physicist Thomas Mee created artificial fog by spraying pure water through narrow nozzles installed however, concerned that the conserva- tions. Starting in the mid-1960s and continuing into the ’70s, the on the Pepsi Pavilion’s roof [above left]. The system tracked wind speed and direction [above right] to ensure the fog was distributed over the group mounted performances and installations that blended tive entertainment company wouldn’t building’s surface. On the pavilion’s terrace, autonomous white “floats” built by sculptor Robert Breer [kneeling, below left] roamed about, electronics, lasers, telecommunications, and computers with produce something hip enough for the emitting soft sounds [below right]. artistic interpretations of current events, the natural world, and burgeoning youth market, and they had the human condition. memories of the 1964 project, when Dis- E.A.T. members saw their activities transcending the making ney ran well over its already consider- of art. Artist–engineer collaborations were understood as cre- able budget. Breer put Thomas in touch ative experiments that would benefit not just the art world but with Klüver, productive dialogue ensued, also industry and academia. For engineers, subject to vocifer- and the company hired E.A.T. in Decem- ous attacks about their complicity in the arms race, the Vietnam ber 1968. War, environmental destruction, and other global ills, the art- Klüver was a master at straddling the and-technology movement presented an opportunity to human- two worlds of art and science. Born in ize their work. Monaco in 1927 and raised in Stockholm, Accordingly, Klüver and the scores of E.A.T. members in the he developed a deep appreciation for cin- United States and Japan who designed and built the pavilion ema as a teen, an interest he maintained considered it an “experiment in the scientific sense,” as the 1972 while studying with future Nobel physicist book Pavilion: Experiments in Art and Technology stated. Klüver Hannes Alfvén. He earned a Ph.D. in elec- pitched the installation as a “piece of hardware” that engineers trical engineering at the University of Cali- and artists would program with “software” (that is, live perfor- fornia, Berkeley, in 1957, and the following mances) to create an immersive visual, audio, and tactile expe- year he accepted a coveted research posi- rience. As with other E.A.T. projects, the goal was not about the tion at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J. product but the process. While keeping up a busy research Pepsi executives, unsurprisingly, viewed their pavilion on some- program, Klüver made time to explore what different terms. These were the years of the Pepsi Genera- performances and gallery openings in tion, the company’s mildly countercultural branding. For them, downtown Manhattan and to seek out the pavilion would be at once an advertisement, a striking visual artists. He soon began collaborating with statement, and a chance to burnish the company’s global reputa- artists such as Yvonne Rainer, Andy War- HERE GOES CREDIT GUTTER HERE GOES CREDIT GUTTER 42 | MAR 2020 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | MAR 2020 | 43 Big in Japan ert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman tered not the building itself but a veil of words, the “key to the whole Pavilion,” II. The and Bell Labs engineer Fred Waldhauer, artificial fog that completely enshrouded and it dictated much of what was planned Experimenters founded Experiments in Art and Tech- the structure. At night, the fog was dra- for the interior. The research and testing nology. By the end of 1967, more than a matically lit and framed by high-intensity for the mirror largely fell to members thousand artists and technical experts xenon lights designed by Myers. of E.AT.’s Los Angeles chapter, led by had joined. And a year later, E.A.T. had On the outdoor terrace, Breer’s white Elsa Garmire. The physicist had done her WORK IN PROGRESS: The Pepsi Pavilion was overseen by Bell Labs engineer Billy Klüver scored the commission to create the floats rolled about autonomously like graduate work at MIT with laser pioneer [below right], who saw it as “an experiment Pepsi Pavilion. large bubbles, emitting soft sounds— Charles Townes and then accepted a post- in the scientific sense.” Dozens of artists and speech, music, the sound of sawing doc in electrical engineering at Caltech. engineers in the United States and Japan worked on the project, including [at right] From the start, E.A.T. envisioned the wood—and gently reversing themselves But Garmire found the environment for laser physicist Elsa Garmire [hoop earrings], pavilion as a multimedia environment when they bumped into something. Steps women at Caltech unsatisfying, and she Thomas Mee [moustache], and Fujiko Nakaya that would offer a flexible, personal- led downward into a darkened tunnel, began to consider the melding of art and [white turtleneck]. The pavilion’s elaborate audio system was designed by David Tudor ized experience for each visitor and that where visitors were greeted by a Japanese engineering as an alternate career path. [below center]. would express irreverent, uncommercial, hostess wearing a futuristic red dress After experimenting with different and antiauthoritarian values. and bell-shaped hat and handed a clear designs, Garmire and her colleagues But reaching consensus on how to real- plastic wireless handset. Stepping farther designed a mirror modeled after the Mylar ize that vision took months of debate and into the tunnel, they would be showered balloon satellites launched by NASA. A argument. Breer wanted to include his with red, green, yellow, and blue light vacuum would hold the mirror’s Mylar lin- slow-moving cybernetic “floats”—large, patterns from a krypton laser system, ing in place, while a rigid outer shell held rounded, self-driving sculptures powered courtesy of Whitman. in the vacuum. E.A.T. unveiled a full-scale by car batteries. Whitman was becoming Ascending into the main pavilion space, prototype of the mirror in September 1969 intrigued with lasers and visual percep- the visitors’ attention would be drawn in a hangar at a Marine Corps airbase. It tion, and felt there should be a place for immediately upward, where their reflec- was built by G.T. Schjeldahl Co., the Min- that. Forrest “Frosty” Myers argued for tions off the huge spherical mirror made nesota-based company responsible for an outdoor light installation using search- it appear that they were floating in space. NASA’s Echo and PAGEOS balloon satel- lights, his focus at the time. Experimen- The dome also created auditory illusions, lites. Gene Youngblood, a columnist for tal composer David Tudor imagined a as echoes and reverberations toyed with an underground newspaper, found him- sophisticated sound system that would people’s sense of acoustic reality.