Art in Japan>Contemporary Art 1930-2004>E.A.T.: The Story of Experiments in Art and Technology

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E.A.T.: The Story of Experiments in Art and Technology

by John McGee

The Pepsi Pavilion at Expo '70 Osaka with Fujiko Nakaya's mist shroud 
(Photo courtesy E.A.T.)

When Andy Warhol wanted to create floating light bulbs, he asked Billy Kluver for help. Kluver, an engineer at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, told him it was impossible and instead offered Warhol a silvery new material the army was using to wrap sandwiches. Warhol made rectangular pillows with the material, known today as Mylar, and filled them with helium, creating his floating funhouse mirrors—Silver Clouds—in 1966. 

Such collaborations between artists and scientists were the driving force behind Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.). The nonprofit organization, founded by Kluver, Robert Rauschenberg and others in 1966, matched artists who had technical problems to engineers willing to solve them. Moreover, writes curator Hisanori Gogota in the exhibition catalog, E.A.T. was "an experiment by engineers to explore where technology and their profession were heading." Though E.A.T.'s major activities wound down by the late 1970s, their adventurous spirit helped spark the future of media art and the interdisciplinary institutions that promote it, e.g. MIT's Media Lab and NTT's Intercommunication Center, where this exhibition is being held. 

Robert Rauschenberg, Solstice, 1968,
Collection of National Museum of Art,
Osaka (Photo: Pollitzer; © Robert 
Rauschenberg/VAGA, New York/SPDA,
Tokyo)

This well-organized, informative show recounts E.A.T.'s genesis and development through sepia-toned historical photos, bilingual panels, hours of video, and several large sculptures and installations. Kluver, E.A.T.'s mastermind, became involved with artists in the early '60s. He and his friends wrangled bicycle wheels and electronic triggers for Jean Tinguely's self-destructing machine, powered a neon "R" in a Jasper Johns painting, and attached a contact mike to Yvonne Rainer's throat so the audience could hear the modulations in her breathing as she danced. 

The artist-engineer pairing system remained informal until the seminal event "9 Evenings: Theater and Engineering," held in October 1966 in New York City's Armory. "9 Evenings" introduced audiences to state-of-the-art performances and music from over 40 artists and engineers, including John Cage and Oyvind Fahlstrom. Technology enlivened things in many ways, e.g. dancers tripped light switches by moving their legs past photo-cells, and a tennis game was amplified through microphones in the rackets (videos of many of the events run in the screening rooms). The response was overwhelming: artists needed engineers. E.A.T. was established in November, and by the early '70s it had become a network of 6,000 members. 

Throughout the lifespan of E.A.T., affiliated groups produced over 500 artworks, most often body-oriented performance or supercharged minimalist sculpture. One of the most memorable projects was the Pepsi Pavilion at Expo '70 Osaka. More than 60 artists and engineers contributed to the interactive exhibits inside the futuristic dome. Outside, Fujiko Nakaya enshrouded the building in mist (decades before Diller and Scofidio's Blur Building), and Robert Breer's giant white gumdrop Floats crept around by themselves.

Andy Warhol, Silver Clouds, 1966
(Photo: © Rudolph Burkhardt) 

Transplanted to the entry hall of the ICC, Floats is the first of several actual artworks you'll run into in this show. In a nearby gallery, Nakaya's fog machine blows a running band of mist, creating a sputtering holographic projection screen for a grainy 1980 video of the Trisha Brown Dance Company. 

Rauschenberg's four interactive sculptures collage transparent, silk-screened layers of colorful images. But his clunky, oversized kaleidoscopes also reveal that technology is a time-based medium that can't be an end in itself. 

Warhol's enchanting Silver Clouds confirm this point. Of all the works here, they have aged the best, primarily because their technology is wedded to, and disappears into, their effect.

This exhibition was held May-June 2003 at NTT/ICC Gallery in Hatsudai, Tokyo, Japan.

©2006 John McGee

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