Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.)

Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) was founded in New York in 1966 by engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer with artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman. The group grew out of 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering, a series of performances at the 69th Regiment Armory where ten artists, including John Cage, Yvonne Rainer, and Robert Rauschenberg, collaborated with thirty engineers from Bell Labs to test new tools such as video projection, infrared cameras, and wireless sound transmission. Out of this work came a non-profit organization that opened its membership to artists and engineers, establishing a structure to facilitate collaborations and expand the role of art in relation to science and industry.

At the core of E.A.T.’s activity was its Technical Services Program, which paired artists with engineers for one-to-one projects, encouraging work in the laboratories and industries where new technologies were being developed. This framework produced a series of landmark events including Some More Beginnings at the Brooklyn Museum in 1968, the first large-scale international exhibition of art and technology; and the Pepsi Pavilion at Expo ’70 in Osaka, where artists and engineers created an immersive environment with a fog sculpture by Fujiko Nakaya, a Mylar spherical mirror, and Robert Breer’s kinetic Floats. E.A.T. also extended its practice beyond the art world with initiatives such as the Anand Project in India, Children and Communication in New York, and Telex: Q&A, which linked public sites in New York, Stockholm, Tokyo, and Ahmedabad into a global conversation about the future of communication and society. At a moment when the mainstream art world limited women’s visibility, E.A.T.’s projects provided a platform for their experiments with technology and performance, including Carolee Schneemann’s politically charged theater, Marta Minujín’s participatory installations, and Lillian Schwartz’s pioneering computer graphics.

In 1980 E.A.T. compiled and distributed an archive of its documents to libraries worldwide, preserving reports, catalogues, proposals, and technical notes as a record of its interdisciplinary method. Retrospective exhibitions, including The Story of E.A.T. (2001–present), have traced its history from Klüver’s early collaborations with Jean Tinguely to its international projects. By opening laboratories to artists, E.A.T. introduced new tools to performance, installation, and communications art and helped reshape the role of the artist in society, providing a model for later initiatives in media art, community technology, and the art–science movement.