Day Passage was created by artist Rockne Krebs as part of the Art & Technology program at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and exhibited at the US Pavilion at EXPO70 in Osaka and at the ‘Art and Technology’ exhibition at LACMA in 1971. Working in collaboration with Hewlett-Packard corporation, Krebs used argon and HeNe lasers to create a multi-coloured, 3D light sculpture. The work included the first laser beam switching system and can be seen as the first laser-light show, later popularized at rock and roll concerts by artists including the Steve Miller Band.
It is “a composition of laser beams – red, green, and blue- in a darkened, L-shaped room with mirrors at its head and foot and two mirrors at its bend. The result is that the beams are reflected to infinite depths in an infinity of interlaced and parallel patterns. They shift color and seem also to shift in space.”[1]
Other early laser artworks include Horst Baumann’s Laserscape Kassel, a site-specific outdoor work for Documenta 6, 1977 (below).
[1] http://www.hparchive.com/measure_magazine/HP-Measure-1971-06.pdf
Artist’s website: https://www.rocknekrebsart.com/
See also: See also http://www.laserfx.com/Backstage.LaserFX.com/Newsletter/BriefHistory.html