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E.A.T. – Experiments in Art and Technology «Pepsi Pavilion for the Expo '70» | pavilion by night
E.A.T. – Experiments in Art and Technology, «Pepsi Pavilion for the Expo '70», 1970
pavilion by night | Photography | Photograph: Harry Shunk | ©
At night Frosty Myers' Light Frame sculpture created a tilted rectangle of light around the Pavilion cutting through the Cloud on the dome. Four triangular poles of different heights, were set in a square 130 feet apart at each corner of the Pavilion plaza. At the top of each pole were two 500-watt, high intensity xenon lights, each light directed toward the light of the neighboring tower, creating a narrow beam of light between each tower to form the rectangle of light. The number of technical breakthroughs in the Pavilion was quite astonishing: the cloud system, the 90-foot diameter spherical mirror, the xenon light frame, the sound loops in the floor, and the design of the control console. Almost everything we did was new and untried. But even more significant was that the Pavilion was a living, responsive environment: The Cloud and the Floats on the exterior were always moving, and inside the sound, lights and images in the mirror were always changing as people entered and explored it. The artists and engineers had created a large and complex work of art.


 
E.A.T. – Experiments in Art and Technology «Pepsi Pavilion for the Expo '70» | Cross Section of the PavilionE.A.T. – Experiments in Art and Technology «Pepsi Pavilion for the Expo '70» | Pavilion exterior viewE.A.T. – Experiments in Art and Technology «Pepsi Pavilion for the Expo '70» | Clam RoomE.A.T. – Experiments in Art and Technology «Pepsi Pavilion for the Expo '70» | Pavilion exterior view (detail)E.A.T. – Experiments in Art and Technology «Pepsi Pavilion for the Expo '70» | Pavilon (view from the back)E.A.T. – Experiments in Art and Technology «Pepsi Pavilion for the Expo '70» | Spherical MirrorE.A.T. – Experiments in Art and Technology «Pepsi Pavilion for the Expo '70» | group photoE.A.T. – Experiments in Art and Technology «Pepsi Pavilion for the Expo '70» | pavilion by nightE.A.T. – Experiments in Art and Technology «Pepsi Pavilion for the Expo '70» | Performance with a flagE.A.T. – Experiments in Art and Technology «Pepsi Pavilion for the Expo '70» | spherical mirror upside downE.A.T. – Experiments in Art and Technology «Pepsi Pavilion for the Expo '70» | exterior view 2 (detail)E.A.T. – Experiments in Art and Technology «Pepsi Pavilion for the Expo '70» | exterior view (detail)E.A.T. – Experiments in Art and Technology «Pepsi Pavilion for the Expo '70» | Laser PerformanceE.A.T. – Experiments in Art and Technology «Pepsi Pavilion for the Expo '70» | Spherical Mirror (model)E.A.T. – Experiments in Art and Technology «Pepsi Pavilion for the Expo '70» | Pepsi Pavillon für die Expo ’70
Osaka | Japan | spherical, 90-foot diameter, 210-degree mirrored dome, geodesic shell, surround-sound system, handsets, 800-pound kinetic sculptures, 4 towers with powerful xenon lights | Participants: John Pearce (Architektur), Bob Whitman (mirror dome), David Tudor (sound systems), Tony Martin (lighting system), Robert Whitman (design), Lowell Cross (laser light system), Fujiko Nakaya (water vapor cloud sculpture), Frosty Myers (Light Frame sculpture)
 

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

«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.)