PAVILION
[by Experiments in Art And Technology]
Billy Klüver, Julie Martin and Barbara Rose [Editors]
Billy Klüver, Julie Martin and Barbara Rose [Editors]: PAVILION [by Experiments in Art And Technology]. New York : E. P. Dutton, 1972. First edition. Glossy photo illustrated wrappers. 346 [xxi] pp. Illustrated essays. Photographs by Shunk-Kender. Trade paperback with a snag to the lower edge of the front panel, resulting in a short, closed tear and a crease to lower corner. Wrappers lightly shelfworn, but a very good or better copy. Rare.
5.5 x 8 trade paperback with 367 pages devoted to the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion for Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan. Contains essays by Elsa Garmire, Billy Klüver, Nilo Lindgren, Fujiko Nakaya, Barbara Rose and Calvin Tomkins, all the artists proposals for the live programming of the Pavilion and photographs by Shunk-Kender. Includes Index, "Technical bibliography" [p. 321-323], ” E.A.T. bibliography” [p. 324-335], and Biographical notes [p. 336-338].
E.A.T., an organization devoted to promoting the interaction between art and technology, developed from the collaboration between Billy Klüver and Robert Rauschenberg. E.A.T. founders, Billy Klüver, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Whitman and Fred Waldhauer, believed that collaboration between artists and scientists would greatly benefit society as a whole. The organization was created after the landmark event "9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering," 1966, and sought to continue the artist / engineer relationship forged during those performances. E.A.T.'s primary goal was to give artists access to new materials, such as plastics, reflecting materials, resins, video, and technologies, such as electronics and computers, which would have been otherwise inaccessible. Staff and participants explored or experimented with these and the precursors of many technologies that are now commonplace: chat lines, fax machines, lasers, cable television, and digitized graphics.
By the early 1970s, E.A.T.'s artist and engineer matching service, called the Technical Services Program, boasted 6,000 members. Through this matching system approximately 500 works were created, the most effective being in the areas of sculpture and performance. E.A.T. considered the collaborative process between artist and engineer of greater import than the aesthetics of the end result. Additionally, E.A.T. helped to organize many exhibitions in order to display the finished products of collaborations. Other E.A.T. activities focused on educational programs designed to inform the public about new telecommunications technologies. Research was conducted in order to locate inexpensive equipment and methods with which to bring TV programming to wider audiences, including underdeveloped countries.
E.A.T. organized and administered a large-scale international collaboration to design, build and program the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion at Expo '70, Osaka, Japan. It was initiated in October 1968 by four core artists: Robert Breer, Forrest Myers, David Tudor and Robert Whitman. As the design of the Pavilion developed, engineers and other artists were added to the project and given responsibility to develop specific elements. Twenty artists and 50 engineers and scientists contributed to the design of the Pavilion. A full-sized model of the mirror dome was built by Raven Industries in an old Marine Corps dirigible hangar in Santa Ana, California. The Pavilion opened Mar 1970.
Thirty-four Japanese and American artists were invited by E.A.T. to design performances for the live programming of the space. Strains in Pepsi-Cola's and E.A.T.'s relationship began to occur when a disagreement ensued over the content and cost of the live programming. Pepsi-Cola officials wanted to showcase young rock bands by inviting them to compete in a contest that would be performed in the Pavilion. E.A.T., on the other hand, believed that the acoustics of the Pavilion were too sensitive and exacting for nonprofessionals to perform in, and had planned for artists such as Red Grooms, Ann Halprin, Allan Kaprow, Gordon Mumma and La Monte Young to perform music compositions, events and poetry readings. E.A.T. presented a live programming budget to Pepsi officials, which they rejected citing E.A.T.'s lack of cost control. By late April, relations between E.A.T. and Pepsi-Cola completed deteriorated. [Getty Research Institute]