BLOG BUILDING OF THE WEEK 14 JUL 2014

ALL YOU CAN E.A.T.

THE 1970 PEPSI PAVILION IN OSAKA
1 / 14 The Pepsi Pavilion, Osaka, 1970, complete with artificial cloud, kinetic sound, light sculptures, and
walk-in spherical mirror. (Photo: Shunk-Kender, © Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, courtesy Experiments in Art
& Technology)

“In the history of human thinking the most fruitful developments frequently take place at those points where two
different lines of thought meet.”
– Werner Heisenberg

Back in 1970, an extraordinary collaboration between the arts, sciences and commerce
resulted in a mind-altering mirrored dome that took the idea of the total work of art into a
whole new dimension. Sebastian Schumacher investigates a barely remembered, ground-
breaking building phenomenon and the organisation that created it.

World Fairs nowadays have a reputation for falling short of their promise and leaving the host nations
and cities with little more than large holes in their pockets and swathes of land which they often
struggle to find a follow-up use for. Retrospectively however they do provide an interesting insight into
their times – not just in terms of the new technological gimmicks of the day, but also the bigger social
and cultural themes of their respective eras. So there was the nineteenth century fad for cast iron and
glass structures kicked off by the Great Exhibition, paralleled by the habit of European nations for
displaying arrays of global booty garnered from their colonial empires; or later, the postwar craze for
Buckminster Fuller-inspired geodesic domes reflecting the belief in a shiny happy utopian – and atomic
– future.

A perfect example of the latter was the Expo ‘70 in Osaka with its theme of “Progress and Harmony
for Mankind”. Bucky Fulleresque domes abounded here in a masterplan designed under the
supervision of Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. A notable one of these was Fritz Bornemann’s West
German Pavilion, which featured the first spherical concert hall based on a concept by Karlheinz
Stockhausen. But perhaps the most fascinating building at the Expo was a small pavilion representing
not a country – but a company: Pepsi Cola.
The Pepsi Pavilion also followed the sphere theme and was covered in structural ridges referring to
origami folding techniques. It reflected the company’s desire to present itself through artistic display:
through a public sculpture rather than a commercial showcase. By inviting a group calling itself
Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) to design and produce the pavilion, Pepsi involved an
organisation who perfectly reflected the zeitgeist. Deeply rooted in the contemporary art scene, E.A.T.
were at the forefront of many developments that are now part of the art canon, most notably the then
all-new field of Media Art.

The origins of E.A.T. went back around a decade. In 1959, the British scientist and novelist C.P. Snow
had articulated in his 1959 Rede Lecture: The Two Cultures, a long simmering divide in modern society
between the sciences and the humanities:

“For constantly I felt I was moving among two groups […]who had almost ceased to communicate at all, who in
intellectual, moral and psychological climate had so little in common that instead of going from Burlington House
or South Kensington to Chelsea, one might have crossed an ocean. In fact, one had travelled much further than
across an ocean because after a few thousand Atlantic miles, one found Greenwich Village talking precisely the same
language as Chelsea, and both having about as much communication with MIT as though the scientists spoke
nothing but Tibetan.”

However at about the same time a young Swedish electrical engineering professor, Billy Klüver, was
already busy counteracting this idea. Klüver worked for Bell Laboratories, a company which had given
rise to many of the technologies that made Silicon Valley possible, but that had also pioneered the
idea of encouraging its employees’ creativity by giving them space and time to pursue their own
interests. During one of these creative time-outs, Klüver visited the art scene in nearby New York,
meeting many of its main protagonists. Like him they were also interested in the possibilities of
technology. This led to early collaborations in which he used his expertise as an engineer to help artists
like Andy Warhol, John Cage and Jasper Johns bring their ideas to life. Following the enthusiastic
response of the New York art community, Klüver and fellow engineer Fred Waldhauer, together with
the two artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman, founded the non-profit organisation
Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) in 1966. Later in 1968 Klüver gave up his position at
Bell Laboratories to become E.A.T.'s president.

For the Pepsi Pavilion, Klüver, together with the artistic director Robert Breer, set out to create a
laboratory, not just for the over 75 artists and engineers involved but also the visitors, immersing them
in an experience – an artwork – in which they would be active participants, not just passive observers,
and exposing them and their senses to new kinds of working relationships and new stimuli. Many of
the artists and scientists involved worked together from very early on in the project, and often were
collaborating across continents.

On approach, a vale of fog shrouded the actual structure, reaching out to the visitors and turning the
whole pavilion into a sculpture. Fujiko Nakaya, the artist in charge of this fog skin, exemplified
E.A.T.’s potential for innovation. She was already known for her smaller cloud sculptures but her plan
to immerse a whole building exceeded her previous experience. Artificial fog on this scale had never
been produced before, nor was there a known technique for how to achieve it. After much research,
she found a physicist in Pasadena who had invented a method capable of delivering the desired effect.
He had so far only done small-scale experiments, but was happy to see his invention turned to good
use.

To reach the pavilion’s main attraction, one had to follow a dark tunnel into the interior. Here the
visitor was greeted by a 27-metre diameter, 210-degree spherical mirror made of aluminised mylar
conceived by artist Robert Whitman. It was inspired by his earlier experiments in optics and was made
possible partially by Bell Laboratories experiences with the Echo Satellite Project – a lightweight
balloon satellite, which reflected signals rather then sending them.

In this case the reflecting surface was placed inside, created a mirror-dome. Standing below this mirror,
a holographic image of the interior appeared above you, which as with the rotunda effect, where a
sound is heard seemingly out of nowhere, was one that didn’t seem to fit with one’s experience. For
one saw oneself hovering from the ceiling, head down.

The second essential part of the interior sensory experience, was the sound system devised by David
Tudor. It consisted of 37 speakers in a rhombic grid mounted behind the mirror, with wireless headsets
for the visitors. Together with the lighting system by artist Tony Martin, all this could be manipulated
in real time via an elaborate control panel, which made point source sound effects possible and gave
the electronic music a spatial feeling. Over the weeks and months following the opening, this stage was
opened up for experimentation, and artists from Japan and America were invited to use the space.

The Pepsi Pavilion became the synthesis of E.A.T.’s years-long experience in establishing collaborations
between artist and engineers, helping them put the ghost into the machine. In doing so they showed,
that although there may be an initial “illiteracy” between the two cultures, as C.P. Snow phrased it, the
different languages still express communicable interests and desires. Artists and scientists, it turned out,
could not only effectively communicate, but could also work parallel on the same project, inspiring
each other, long before the hype of today’s interdisciplinary collaborations.

– Sebastian Schumacher

(With special thanks to Julie Martin)

PUBLISHED 14 Jul 2014 WHAT Architecture Building of the Week WHERE Osaka Japan WHO William
Klüver AUTHOR Sebastian Schumacher