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 Over 30 engineers from Bel1 Telephone Laboratories, Inc. have devoted their spare time for nearly nine months to finding solutions to performance problems posed by new concepts of the artists. They have created mechanical and electronic equipment and developed chemical materials which permit totally new means of expression.
 
 Billy Kluver of the Physical Optics and Electronics Research Department at Bell Laboratories supervised and coordinated the work of the engineers. For six years he has put technology to work for such artists as Jean Tingueley, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, and Andy Warhol. "These artists could not complete their intentions without the engineer because they incorporate his work in the painting, sculpture, or performance." explains Kluver. "Nine Evenings" marks the first such effort on a major scale.
 
 Audiences during the "Nine Evenings" will experience new forms of artistic expression. They will seldom be aware of the technical means which make them possible. One of the most ambitious projects undertaken in connection with "Nine Evenings," for example, is a new electronic environmental theater system. Called THEME (Theater Environmental Modular Electronic), the system was designed to fill the requirements of specific theatrical situations for all ten artists. It permits simultaneous remote control of multiple sounds, lights, and movements of objects and will be used extensively but wi11 never be visible to the audience.
 
 Those technical units which can be seen are integral parts of individual works. Oyvind Fahlstrom will use motion picture, television, and slide projection screens to present several aspects of a subject simultaneously--as for example, when details of onstage or offstage action