Roger,

Thank you for posting this most enlightening message!

Allan(R)
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roger Stevens" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2004 6:52 AM
Subject: FLUXLIST: FW: Obituary, Billy Kluver 1927-2004


>
> ----------
> This is a posting from the Arts Council England "arts news" mailing
> list. Please send any response direct to the sender rather than replying
> to the list itself.
> ----------
> OBITUARY FOR BILLY KLUVER
>
> Billy Kluver, scientist, and writer, was the originator of the
> contemporary art and technology movement. He died Sunday, January 11,
> 2004, at his home in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, from melanoma. He was
> 76 years old.
>
> Billy Kluver, a Swedish citizen, was born Johan Wilhelm Kluver, in
> Monaco
> on November 13, 1927, and grew up in Sweden, where his father built the
> first ski hotel in Sweden. He graduated in electrical engineering from
> the
> Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. He also served as president of
>
> the Stockholm University Film Society and was a co-founder of the
> Swedish
> Alliance of Film Societies.
>
> He spent the year 1952 working for Thomson-Houston in France where he
> helped install the television antenna on top of the Eiffel Tower and
> devise an underwater television camera for Jacques Cousteau's
> expeditions.
>
> He came to the United States in 1954, and received a Ph.D. in Electrical
> Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1957. He
> served as Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering, at the
> University
> of California, Berkeley, 1957-58.
>
> >From 1958 to 1968 he was a Member of Technical Staff at Bell Telephone
> Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. He has published numerous
> technical and scientific papers on, among others, small signal power
> conservation in electron beams, backward-wave magnetron amplifiers and
> infra-red lasers. He holds 10 patents.
>
> In the early 1960s, he collaborated with artists on works of art
> incorporating new technology, including Jean Tinguely's machine that
> destroyed it self in the garden of the Museum of Modern Art, Homage to
> New York; provided Jasper Johns with neon letters for two paintings;
> Robert Rauschenberg's sound sculpture Oracle, John Cage's and Merce
> Cunningham's Variation V; and Andy Warhol's Silver Clouds.
>
> In October 1966 he and Robert Rauschenberg organized a series of
> performances at the 69th Regiment Armory: "9 Evenings: Theatre and
> Engineering." Ten artists -- John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Öyvind
> Fahlstrom, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Robert
> Rauschenberg, David Tudor, and Robert Whitman -- worked with more than
> 30
> engineers from Bell Telephone Laboratories to produce performances
> incorporating new technology; and the evenings were attended by more
> than
> 15,000 people.
>
> That same year, 1966, Kluver, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Whitman, and
> Fred Waldhauer founded Experiments in Art and Technology, a
> not-for-profit
> service organization for artists and engineers; and Kluver became
> president of E.A.T. in 1968. E.A.T. established a Technical Services
> Program to provide artists with technical information and assistance by
> matching them with engineers and scientists who could collaborate with
> them.
>
> In 1970 Kluver headed a team of more thant 60 artist, scientists and
> engineer to design and program the Pepsi Pavilion at Expo '70, Osaka
> Japan.
>
> Kluver also initated and directed communication projects for E.A.T.:
> - pilot projects to produce instructional programming for educational
>   television at the Anand Dairy Cooperative, Baroda, India;
> - Utopia: Q&A, public spaces linked by telex in New York, Ahmedabad,
>   India, Tokyo, and Stockholm, where people could ask people in other
>   countries questions about the future, 1971;
> - pilot program to develop methods for recording indigenous culture in
>   El Salvador 1973;
> - Children and Communication pilot project to use telephone, telex and
>   fax equipment to have children in different parts of New York City
>   communicate with each other, 1972;
> - large screen outdoor television display system for Centre Georges
>   Pompidou, Paris, 1976-1977;
> - collaboration with artists Fujiko Nakaya (1980) and Robert
> Rauschenberg
>   (1989) to design sets for the Trisha Brown Dance Company.
>
> In 1997 Kluver initiated a series of films documenting the artists
> performances in the 9 Evenings from 1966.
>
> In 1972 Kluver, Barbara Rose and Julie Martin edited a book Pavilion,
> that documented the design and construction of the Pepsi Pavilion for
> Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan.
>
> He is co-author with Julie Martin of the book Kiki's Paris, a history of
>
> the art community in Montparnasse form 1880 to 1930. It has been
> published
> by Harry N. Abrams in 1989 and later in France, Germany, Sweden, and
> Spain.
>
> He and Julie Martin edited and annotated the original English
> translation
> of Kiki's Memoir's, published in 1930, but banned by U.S. Customs from
> the
> United States. It was issued by Ecco Press in Fall 1996; and in French
> by
> Editions Hazan in 1998.
>
> His book, A Day with Picasso, has been published by MIT Press in the
> fall
> of 1997, and was previously published by Cantz Verlag in Germany in 1993
> and by Editions Hazan in France in 1994 and was published by Hakusuisha
> in
> Japan in 1999, and in Korea and Italy in 2000, and in Brazil in 2003.
>
> A the time of his death he was working with Julie Martin on a social
> history of international art communities from 1945 to 1965 in the United
> States, Western Europe and Japan.
>
> In 1974 he received the Royal Order of Vasa, from the King of Sweden.
> In
> 1998 he received an honorary doctorate in Fine Arts from Parsons School
> of
> Design of the New School University. In 2002 he received the order of
> Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French Government.
>
> Billy Kluver is survived by his wife, Julie Martin, a daughter Maja
> Kluver of Brooklyn, NY; a son Kristian Patrik Kluver of Boulder
> Colorado;
> Half brothers Bjorn Tarras-Wahlberg and Lorentz Lyttkens; a
> half-sister Ase Lyttkens all of Stockholm, Sweden.
>
> For more information please call Julie Martin 212 285 1690 or email
> mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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