Johan W. Kluver, Engineer Helped Create Contemporary Art, 76

[DGH]

.

Johan Wilhelm "Billy" Kluver, electrical engineer who worked with such
artists as Jasper Johns and Jon Cage to create technological
contemporary art, died January 11, 2004, of melanoma at his home in
Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, at the age of 76.

A Swedish citizen born in Monaco and reared in Salen, Sweden, Kluver
earned a degree in electrical engineering from the Royal Institute of
Technology in Stockholm and later a doctorate in electrical
engineering from UC Berkeley, where he taught briefly. In 1952, he
helped install the television antenna atop the Eiffel Tower in Paris;
in the 1960s he was a technician for Bell Telephone Laboratories in
Murray Hill, New Jersey, earning 10 patents.

Kluver began a lengthy collaboration with artists in the 1960s,
helping Jean Tinguely create the machine that destroyed itself,
"Homage to New York," in the garden of the Museum of Modern Art. He
provided neon letters for Johns' paintings, helped Robert Rauschenberg
with his sound sculpture "Oracle," and helped musician Cage and
choreographer Merce Cunningham utilize technology for their "Variation
V." He also worked with Andy Warhol on his "Silver Clouds."

In 1966, Kluver helped Rauschenberg and others found Experiments in
Art and Technology for artists and engineers and served as president
in 1968. He headed a team that created the Pepsi Pavilion for Expo '70
in Osaka, Japan, and cowrote the book "Pavilion" about the experience.
He also published the book "A Day with Picasso" in the United States
in 1997 and in six other countries.