The exhibition “Sensing the Future: Experiments in Art and Technology” (E.A.T.), running from September 10, 2024, to February 23, 2025, explores the groundbreaking collaborations between artists, engineers, and scientists initiated in the 1960s.
Founded in 1966 by Billy Klüver, Fred Waldhauer, Robert Rauschenberg, and Robert Whitman, E.A.T. fostered interdisciplinary projects that transcended traditional art, impacting communication, education, and environmental sustainability. Highlights include “9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering” (1966), featuring avant-garde artists like John Cage and Yvonne Rainer, and the innovative Pepsi-Cola Pavilion at Expo ’70, which integrated fog sculptures, lasers, and surround sound. The exhibition features archival materials, original footage, and interactive installations.
Sensing the Future. Experiments in Art and Technology / Getty Center. Los Angeles, October 13, 2024.
Press text (excerpt):
In 1966, engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer and artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman founded Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), an organization dedicated to promoting and supporting collaborations between artists, engineers, and scientists.
E.A.T.’s events integrated art, theater, multi-sensory environments, and groundbreaking technology, fostering connections among multiple disciplines.
Sensing the Future: Experiments in Art and Technology, on view September 10, 2024, through February 23, 2025, tells the story of E.A.T.’s origins and impact.
“This is the only PST exhibition exploring art and science collaborations that emerged in the 1960s,” says Mary Miller, director of the Getty Research Institute. “The group’s pioneering efforts to facilitate collaboration pushed its programs beyond the art world, into areas of communication, education, agriculture, and environmental sustainability.” E.A.T. artists and engineers came to believe that their partnerships could benefit society.”
In October 1966, Klüver and Rauschenberg gathered 30 engineers from Bell Telephone Laboratories and 10 avant-garde artists to participate in E.A.T.’s inaugural multi-disciplinary project. The event, called 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering (1966), combined new technologies with theatre, dance, and music. Artists involved included John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Öyvind Fahlström, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Rauschenberg, David Tudor, and Robert Whitman. Sensing the Futurefeatures original footage of these performances as well as archival material including handwritten notes, circuit diagrams, and photographs.
E.A.T.’s second major project, the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion, which was part of Expo ’70 in Osaka, Japan (1970), created a multi-sensory environment. Visible on the exterior were a dome surrounded by billowing fog and a plaza filled with moving sculptures; on the interior, one encountered lines of laser light, a surround sound system, and a 90-foot diameter hemispherical mirror dome. Fujiko Nakaya created the fog sculpture, Robert Breer the motorized floats, Forrest Myers the light frame sculptures, and David Tudor the sound system. Color photography, large scale graphics, and animated fog will recreate this sensorial event.
As part of the exhibition programming, the GRI and the Getty Museum are organizing performances at the Getty Center that reimagine dance pieces last performed as part of 9 Evenings in 1966. Deborah Hay’s solo, revisitedwill be performed twice over the weekend of October 5 and 6, 2024, and Lucinda Childs’ Vehicle will be presented the first week of February, 2025. In addition, David Tudor’s live electronic Pepsi Pieces will be showcased during the October weekend by Composers Inside Electronics.
According to Nancy Perloff, GRI curator of the exhibition, “Sensing the Future provides a special window into the projects of E.A.T. by enabling visitors to activate works of art by Rauschenberg and Jean Dupuy, experience the vast sound system of the Pepsi Pavilion, and immerse themselves in the Pepsi floor with its corresponding textures and sounds. This participatory experience, including the performances, captures an E.A.T. not typically revealed in exhibitions.”
Released in conjunction with this exhibition, season three of Getty’s Recording Artists podcast highlights the stories of three key E.A.T. members: Robert Rauschenberg, Billy Kluver, and Fujiko Nakaya. Actor and educator Ahmed Best hosts the series, which features archival interviews with Rauschenberg, Kluver, and Nakaya from the GRI collection as well as newly conducted interviews with contemporary artists and scientists.
Sensing the Future: Experiments in Art and Technology is curated by Nancy Perloff, Curator, Modern and Contemporary Collections.
This exhibition is part of PST ART, a Getty initiative presenting over 70 exhibitions at institutions across Southern California tied to the theme Art & Science Collide.
