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

Johan Wilhelm “Billy” Kluver, 76, electrical engineer who worked with such artists as Jasper Johns and Jon Cage to create technological contemporary art, died Jan. 11 of melanoma at his home in Berkeley Heights, N.J.

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, N.J., 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.