Randall Packer on Thu, 15 Jan 2004 08:37:44 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> Billy Kluver Passed Away |
My dear friend and mentor Billy Kluver, the Bell Labs scientist who sparked the art and technology movement during the 1960s, died Sunday morning at his home in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. For all who knew him, Billy was someone you never forgot: outspoken, stubborn, brilliant, and defiant. A true anarchist! As David Ross once told me, Billy was the real deal. I have spent the last six years, since meeting Billy and his wife Julie Martin, drawing connections between contemporary media arts practice and Billy's extraordinary achievement during the 1960s when he befriended such artists as Jean Tinguely, Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns - the list goes on - urging them to explore the new technologies and collaborating on some of the most important and adventurous artworks of the time. It was clear to me that Billy's ideas on the integration of art and technology and the collaboration between artist and engineer had a profound impact on the changing relationship between the artist and the artwork. Such works as the Pepsi Pavilion changed the way we look at art, in which the viewer becomes an integral and active participant in the composition of the experience. But most of all, Billy's anarchist ways were directly targeted at freeing the artist from the constraints of traditional materials. He felt that the engineer as a partner in the creative process opened doors to artistic thinking and artistic process that were unimaginable. And he was right. Since Billy opened those doors in the 1960s, with his collaborative projects and the founding of E.A.T. (Experiments in Art & Technology), his imagination, vision, and commitment to the ideals of art and technology have had, I believed, the most dramatic impact on the surge in electronic art and multimedia over the past twenty years. I'm sure there will be many tributes for Billy Kluver in the coming months. I want to bring one of them to everyone's attention, since Billy and I had planned to present his work in a dialogue at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC on Sunday, March 7th at 2pm. The event will still take place, but now it will be a lecture and tribute to his life and work. I hope all of you who are in the area will come to the National Gallery to remember Billy. I want to also note that Billy is survived by his wife Julie Martin, another dear friend, and a critical support to Billy and his achievements. This should also be a moment to give thanks to Julie for keeping Billy going for all these years and for being his most important collaborator. Randall Packer Billy Kluver Obituary in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/13/arts/design/13KLUV.html In Depth profile on Billy Kluver from Multimedia: >From Wagner to Virtual Reality http://www.artmuseum.net/w2vr/archives/Kluver/Kluver.html The Story of E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology) and Its Founder Billy Kluver, Lecture by Randall Packer National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC Sunday, March 7, 2 pm Auditorium # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net