The Pavilion << Into the 21st Century >>

Project Team

Randall Packer, Project Director

Randall Packer is internationally recognized as a pioneering multimedia artist and composer, educator, and scholar in the electronic arts. As an artist his work has been exhibited at museums and galleries throughout the world including Europe, Japan, and North America. He is the recipient of several awards for his work, including an Artist Fellowship Award from the Washington, DC Commission on the Arts. Packer is Professor of Electronic Arts and the Director of the Center for New Media at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. As a scholar in the field of multimedia, his book and accompanying Web site, Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality (W.W. Norton 2001) , has been adopted internationally as one of the leading educational texts in the field. He lectures frequently on the history and theory of multimedia.

Joe Howard, Research Director / Optical Engineer

Joseph M. Howard completed his Ph.D. in Optics in September 1999 at The Institute of Optics, University of Rochester. His research is documented in his thesis, titled Unobstructed Spherical Mirror Systems. Following graduation, he was awarded a Research Associateship from the National Research Council, and became a visiting scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. While an associate he investigating unobstructed reflective optic systems for space optics applications, including NASA's Next Generation Space Telescope. Joe is now a full-time NASA employee at Goddard, and lives in Washington D.C.

Gregory Kuhn, Installation Designer

Gregory Kuhn has participated in the avant-garde of the performing arts since 1987, as sound engineer, designer, composer, and collaborator. He received a BA in Music from Swarthmore College and completed graduate studies at Combs College of Music. Since 1988 he has worked as a freelance designer in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he has collaborated with numerous arts organizations, institutions, and individuals on a great diversity of local, national, and international projects for theater, multimedia, dance, and experimental and contemporary music performances. His work has been heard in stages across the United States including the Library of Congress, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Walker Arts Center, and in Europe including the Gulbenkian Amphitheater in Lisbon.

Wesley Smith, Media Engineer

Wesley Smith graduated from Johns Hopkins University and the Maryland Institute College of Art where he received his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and a post-baccalaureate certificate in art. He is currently doing graduate work in the Masters in Art & Technology department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His work encompasses a wide range of electronic media in which he designs interactive systems that explore the human dynamic. He is an artist in residence at NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center, where he is working on the Pavilion project.

Billy Klüver, Consultant (deceased)

Born in Monaco in 1927, he graduated in 1951 from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. He received his PhD in electrical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1957. From 1958 to 1968, Dr. Klüver was a member of the Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J. working on physics of infra-red lasers. Klüver co-founded E.A.T. (Experiments in Art & Technology), along with Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman in 1966, to make new technology available to artists, promote collaborations between artists and engineers, and sponsor innovative projects in the arts and sciences. Klüver's contribution to the arts changed the landscape of the art world, a catalyst in the subsequent incorporation of advanced technologies in contemporary art. Klüver has since been named Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, New School University, New York, and Knight of the Royal Order of Vasa, First Class, Stockholm. Most recently, Klüver has been presented with the medal of the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in recognition of his efforts on behalf of the arts in France, in the United States, and throughout the world.

Julie Martin, Consultant

In 1968 Julie Martin joined the staff of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.). In 1972, she was co-editor with Billy Klüver and Barbara Rose of The Pavilion, a collection of critical writing on the Pepsi Pavilion. Together with Billy Klüver, she wrote Kiki's Paris on the art community in Montparnasse from 1880 to 1930. Published in 1989, it has subsequently appeared in France, Germany, Spain, and Sweden. They have also written a number of articles in museum catalogues on Montparnasse and on artists like Man Ray and Soutine, as well as contemporary artists Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Breer, and David Tudor.