Fujiko Nakaya & E.A.T. for the Expo '70 (Osaka) | #artificial #environment

 

E.A.T. – Experiments in Art and Technology, «Pepsi Pavilion for the Expo '70», 1970
Pavilion exterior view 

 

In September of 1968 Robert Breer introduced the members of E.A.T. to his neighbor, David Thomas of Pepsi Cola, who proposed that artists be involved in designing the Pepsi Pavilion for Expo ‘70 in Osaka, Japan. Breer and Billy Klüver chose Frosty Myers, Robert Whitman, and David Tudor to collaborate on the design of the Pavilion. As the design of the Pavilion developed, engineers and more artists were added to the project and given responsibility to develop specific elements. All in all 63 engineers, artists and scientists contributed to the design of the Pavilion. Outside the Pavilion, the dome, which had been decided on before we came into the project, was covered by a water vapor cloud sculpture, by Fujiko Nakaya. And on the plaza, seven of Robert Breer's Floats, six-foot high white sculptures, moved around slowly at less than 2 feet per minute, emitting sound. Four tall triangular towers held the lights for Myers’ Light Frame sculpture.

 

«The ‹Pepsi Pavilion› was first an experiment in collaboration and interaction between the artists and the engineers, exploring systems of feedback between aesthetic and technical choices, and the humanization of technological systems. Klüver‘s ambition was to create a laboratory environment, encouraging ‹live programming› that offered opportunity for experimentation, rather than resort to fixed or ‹dead programming› as he called it, typical of most exposition pavilions. [...] The Pavilion‘s interior dome–immersing viewers in three-dimensional real images generated by mirror reflections, as well as spatialized electronic music–invited the spectator to individually and collectively participate in the experience rather than view the work as a fixed narrative of pre-programmed events. The Pavilion gave visitors the liberty of shaping their own reality from the materials, processes, and structures set in motion by its creators.»

(Randall Packer, «The Pepsi Pavilion: Laboratory for Social Experimentation», in: Jeffrey Shaw/Peter Weibel (eds), Future Cinema. The cinematic Imaginary after Film, exhib. cat., The MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.), London, 2003, p. 145.)