Gerd Stern, Beat Era Poet and Multimedia Artist, Dies at 96

Gerd Stern, a Beat Generation poet, pioneering multimedia artist and proponent of sensory overload, whose performances, installations and kinesthetic events involved popular culture notables like Marshall McLuhan, Timothy Leary and the New York City disc jockey Murray the K, died on Monday in Manhattan.He was 96.His daughter, Radha Stern, confirmed his death, in a rehabilitation center.

He lived in Manhattan.Moving back and forth between the Bay Area and New York City from the late 1940s through the late ’60s, Mr.Stern was something of a counterculture Zelig.He met Allen Ginsberg in Manhattan when both were briefly checked into Columbia Presbyterian Psychiatric Institute.

He built musical instruments for the avant-garde composer Harry Partch.He worked for the paperback publisher Ace Books and arranged the publication of William Burroughs’s pseudonymous first novel, “Junkie.” He managed the poet Maya Angelou at the start of her earlier career as a cabaret performer.

(They were romantically involved as well.) He also wrote travel articles for Playboy magazine and helped create the Berkeley listener-supported station KPFA-FM.With Michael Callahan and Steve Der Key, Mr.Stern founded the artists’ collective USCO, which took its name from “US company.” Members included the photographer and weaver Judi Stern (his third wife), the film and video maker Jud Yalkut and Stewart Brand, who would publish and edit the “Whole Earth Catalog,” the popular counterculture resource manual and product guide.Communally living in an abandoned church in Garnerville, N.Y., in Rockland County, the group’s members helped define the 1960s with performances that were often described as psychedelic.

Slide and film projection, kinetic sculpture, strobe lights and music were all part of the show....