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Thirty Years After: A Tribute to Billy Klüver
by Randall Packer
Thirty years ago today, the Pepsi-Pavilion opened at Expo 1970 in
Osaka, Japan. This extraordinary work, the most ambitious undertaking
of Billy Klüver and E.A.T., involved the collaboration of over 75
artists and engineers from the US and Japan. More than an artwork, it
was, like the Pyramids, a cultural force in the sheer scope and
audacity of its conception. Bob Whitman, one of the collaborating
artists, claimed it was the largest art project of the second half of
the 20th Century.
At a conference I attended recently, an art historian remarked that
the Pepsi-Pavilion hovers like a "ghost" over the contemporary art
world. This is a work that in one form or another has "touched" every
artist working today with technology, yet few ever experienced it
first hand. Hardly anyone who has read about the Pavilion, referenced
in numerous books on art and technology, has witnessed its fog
sculpture designed by Fujiko Nakaya, carved from fine mist sprayed
high above its geodesic structure; or the Frosty Myers' Suntrak, a
mirrored tower that followed the movement of the sun, reflecting it
rays on the surface of the dome; or the 800 pound kinetic sculptures
by Robert Whitman that he affectionately called "Floats", slowly and
mischievously roaming the terrace; or Lowell Cross and David Tudor's
laser projections that engulfed viewers as they entered the lower
level of the Pavilion, in a multi-colored electronic baptism; or the
surround-sound system designed by Tudor and Gordon Mumma that immersed
the listener in the Pavilion's dome, trajectories of electronic sounds
and cries of whales moving across the space; or the giant spherical
mirror conceived by Robert Whitman, larger than any other in the
world - not even NASA has attempted this - which projected upside
down, three dimensional holographic-like "real" images into the
performance space for the mostly Japanese visitors who were
mesmerized, delighted, terrified, intrigued, baffled, entranced and
bewildered by this other-worldly creation.
The Pepsi-Pavilion was the culmination of ten, incredible years of
creative work by Billy Klüver and his collaborators during the decade
of the 1960s, that forever altered the course of art history. It was
the birth of a movement that united the sister disciplines of art and
science, once and for all, into a unified medium - more decisively,
perhaps, than any period in history since Aristotle and the ancient
Greeks.
It all began in the spring of 1960 when Jean Tinguely asked Billy if
he would assist him with the construction of an outdoor sculpture
commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art for the Museum's sculpture
garden. Billy, who was working on laser systems at Bell Laboratories
in Murray Hill, New Jersey, couldn't resist the offer. Hardly
satisfied by purely scientific pursuits, he was eager to become a part
of the artistic milieu that was then giving birth to pop art,
minimalism, and Happenings a short drive away in New York City. He
was, as you can imagine, probably the only engineer on the planet even
aware of this activity.
Jean Tinguely's infamous self-destructing kinetic sculpture was
appropriately titled "Homage to New York." Klüver's participation in
this work, with its paint bombs, chemical stinks, noisemakers, and
fragments of scrap metal, inspired a generation of artists to imagine
the possibilities of technology, as the machine destroyed itself, in
Klüver's words, "in one glorious act of mechanical suicide." As Calvin
Tomkins colorfully narrates in his book "Off the Wall:" "The great
white machine rattles and shivers in all its members. Smoke pours from
its interior, temporarily blanketing the audience. The piano catches
fire and burns, accompanying its own demise with three mournful notes
repeated over and over. Parts of the structure break loose and scuttle
off to die elsewhere. Crossbeams sag as electric charges melt the
previously weakened joints. A Rauschenberg "money-thrower" goes off
with a blinding flash, scattering silver dollars... a fireman,
summoned by Tinguely, comes out to extinguish the blaze in the piano;
he is angrily booed by the spectators. After about twenty minutes it
becomes clear that the machine will not perish unaided; firemen's axes
finish the job, and 'Homage to New York' returns to the junk piles
from which it was born. The nineteen sixties have begun."
After this blazing entrance into the New York art scene, Billy
enthusiastically joined in the revelry that continued through the
1960s, participating in the myriad of performances, Happenings and
uncategorizable events staged in lofts and storefronts by the likes of
Claus Oldenburg, Bob Whitman, Jim Dine, and others. Clearly the
performance art of the early 1960s made a strong impression on Billy,
heightening his interest in exploring open forms, unconventional
materials, and the process of interdisciplinary collaboration that was
his trademark.
Chief among his many collaborators was Robert Rauschenberg.
Rauschenberg had been in the audience the fateful day the "Homage to
New York" self-destructed, and asked Billy if he would work with him.
This was the beginning of a close relationship - today they are still
like brothers - a collaboration that produced some of the most
groundbreaking art and technology works of the 20th Century. Such
works as "Dry Cell" (1963), "Oracle" (1962-65), "Soundings" (1968) and
"Solstice" (1968) were among the first artworks ever to explore the
cybernetic exchange between the viewer and the machine. Rauschenberg,
whose oft quoted credo, "to close the gap between art and life," was
interested in using technology to engage the audience in an
interactive relationship to the world around them, bringing about an
intimacy with the technological interactions that have become
ubiquitous in everyday life. This notion also underscored Billy's
objective, which was to bring the artist closer to the concerns of the
engineer and the materials of technology, and reciprocally, for the
artist to engage the engineer, typically beholden to the corporate
establishment, in meaningful cultural dialogue.
Billy not only introduced new ways of incorporating technology to Jean
Tinguely and Robert Rauschenberg, but countless other artists and
performers including Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, John Cage, Merce
Cunningham, David Tudor, Lucinda Childs, Yvonne Rainer and Robert
Whitman. The list goes on. In 1966, Klüver and Rauschenberg organized
one of the defining events of the decade. It was the "Nine Evenings of
Theater and Engineering" held at the cavernous 69th Regiment Armory in
New York, in which ten artists created new performance works, each
working with one or more engineers recruited by Billy Klüver from Bell
Laboratories. It is important to note for the record books, that these
projects were not funded by Bell Labs, and that the engineers who
worked on them did so under their own initiative and on more or less
their own time.
Although "Nine Evenings" was never an overwhelming "critical" success,
criticism has never slowed Billy down. These performances proved above
all that the artist imagination and his understanding of the social
condition, united with the engineer's practical instincts and
knowledge of technology, would yield works of "art and technology"
that opened up new opportunities for artistic expression. Furthermore,
the embrace of technology promised a new central role for the artist
in an increasingly technological society.
And so, following "Nine Evenings," Billy Klüver, together with Robert
Rauschenberg, Robert Whitman and engineer Fred Waldhauer, formalized
the idea of uniting artists and engineers by founding the now
legendary E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology) - designed in
their words, "to catalyze the inevitable active involvement of
industry, technology and the arts." At their first meeting, held at
the Central Plaza Hotel in the fall of 1966, over 300 artists showed
up, eighty of whom made requests for engineers and technical support.
E.A.T. recruited engineers, published a newsletter, and held open
house wherever artists and engineers could meet informally. The
momentum that resulted from this effort led to the formation of
chapters all over the country with thousands of members. E.A.T. has
since become a model for countless organizations and institutions
worldwide, including museums, universities, research laboratories,
non-profit groups, even such corporate think tanks as Xerox PARC in
Palo Alto, California, where the personal computer was born.
In the first edition of their newsletter Techne, E.A.T's mission
statement was published. The visionary nature of this "call to action"
addressed critical issues foreshadowing current efforts to galvanize
collaboration between artists and engineers, promote the importance of
technology in the contemporary arts and society at large, and to
funnel corporate support into new media efforts. It reads: "Maintain a
constructive climate for the recognition of the new technology and the
arts by a civilized collaboration between groups unrealistically
developing in isolation. Eliminate the separation of the individual
from technological change and expand and enrich technology to give the
individual variety, pleasure, and avenues for exploration and
involvement in contemporary life. Encourage industrial initiative in
generating original forethought, instead of a compromise in aftermath,
and precipitate a mutual agreement in order to avoid the waste of a
cultural revolution."
But it was not until 1968 that E.A.T. and the emerging art and
technology movement was embraced and legitimized by the mainstream
artworld. That was when curator Pontus Hulten organized the "Machine
as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age" exhibition at the Museum of
Modern Art in New York. Hulten boldly articulated the importance of
new forms of technology-based art by staging a sweeping historical
overview that began with Leonardo da Vinci and continued into the 20th
Century. Hulten asked his old friend Billy Klüver to organize an
exhibition of contemporary art and technology works in order to bring
the exhibition up to the present. Klüver put out a call for
participation under the auspices of E.A.T., and presented the show
"Some More Beginnings" at the Brooklyn Museum. The judges were,
appropriately, all engineers.
The impact of Billy Klüver's work, born from his desire to engage with
the artist, to be a resource for artists, has resulted in a lifelong
dedication to artists and their art, including their relentless need
to break new ground. This effort has been a primary catalyst leading
to the widespread assimilation of technology into the mainstream
contemporary arts, not just in New York, but around the world. Billy's
role has always been to give, and despite this total, uncompromising
dedication, his approach as an engineer was never to be servile, but
rather to "serve" the artist as an active and equal partner in the
creation of the artwork. This simple, but powerful idea is, I believe,
his most important contribution, and its effect can be felt as more
than a ghostly presence in our increasingly interdisciplinary times.
For as Marshall McLuhan said, the artist must get "out of the ivory
tower and intro the control tower." And Nam June Paik added,
"cybernated art is very important, but art for cybernated life is more
important." Or in Billy's own words, "...the artist is a visionary
about life. Only he can create disorder and still get away with it.
Only he can use technology to its fullest capacity... the artists have
to use technology because technology is becoming inseparable from our
lives."
Billy Klüver has revealed to us how the artist might be a force of
renewal in a cybernated society, not by withdrawing from the
terrifying speed of social and technological change, but by "closing
the gap between art and life," joining forces with the scientist to
re-engineer the cultural condition.
I would like to close with these words of Billy Klüver describing the
Pepsi-Pavilion, words that were written thirty years ago but still
resonate today, words that should be remembered as computers, the
Internet, and the variety of interactive media permeate and begin to
dominate our contemporary life:
"The initial concern of the artists who designed the Pavilion was that
the quality of the experience of the visitor should involve choice,
responsibility, freedom, and participation. The Pavilion would not
tell a story or guide the visitor through a didactic, authoritarian
experience. The visitor would be encouraged as an individual to
explore the environment and compose his own experience."
Thank you, Billy.
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