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Guna Nadarajan Participates in Interspatial Symposium

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Image: Mirror Dome, Pepsi Pavilion, 1970, photo by Fujiko Nakaya 

On Sept. 21, Stamps School Dean Guna Nadarajan will participating in Interspatial, a symposium at the Exploratorium’s Center for Art & Inquiry that explores the legacy and influence of art and technology experiments of the 1960s and 70s.

Interspatial: E.A.T., Cybernetic Serendipity, and the Future of Creative Collaboration

Saturday, September 212013
Symposium: 10:30 am — 5:00 pm 
Performances (including Collusion by Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst): 7:00 — 8:30 pm 

A series of groundbreaking art and technology experiments took place between 1965 and 1971, each seeking to integrate the advances of science and technology within the spheres of art and culture. The Exploratorium, itself a hybrid laboratory/​museum environment, officially opened its doors in 1969 with the traveling exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity, organized by Jasia Reichardt for the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. The show featured the explorations of artists and scientists inspired by the creative possibilities of computation.

At the same time, a group of artists including Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman and engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer formed Experiments in Art & Technology (E.A.T.) to facilitate collaborations between artists and engineers. The E.A.T. Pepsi Pavilion, an immersive performance environment created for the Expo 70 in Osaka, Japan, is generally regarded as the pinnacle of the group’s work. E.A.T. collaborator Fujiko Nakaya (creator of the Exploratorium’s current outdoor installation Fog Bridge) enshrouded the Pepsi Pavilion in billowing fog.

Interspatial, a day-long symposium organized by the Exploratorium’s Center for Art & Inquiry, brings together key collaborators of the E.A.T. Pepsi Pavilion project along with other artists, theorists, and interdisciplinary thinkers to explore the legacy and influence of art and technology experiments of the 1960s and 70s. The event will focus on architectural and metaphorical conceptions of space. We will consider how these experiments shaped the environments, networks, and hybrid cultures we inhabit today and enabled the potential for exchange and new knowledge. What inspires people to migrate outside of given domains of expertise in cooperative efforts and why is that critical today?

Participants include:

  • Mat Dryhurst
  • Amy Franceschini
  • Elsa Garmire
  • Holly Herndon
  • Julie Martin
  • You Nakai
  • Fujiko Nakaya
  • Gunalan Nadarajan
  • Kenjiro Okazaki
  • Meara’ O’Reilly
  • Casey Reas
  • Beau Seviers
  • Wilm Thoben
  • John Weber