He began his working career as a guide at the Detroit Institute of Arts, a job that afforded him the opportunity to explore the vast collection of that museum.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Pallas was a pioneer in [kinetic art] using electronics and early computer technology to enable his sculptures to respond to external stimuli.

The mandala displayed the animated patterns generated in response to the movements of people around it using micro-wave radar and a photocell.

[14] In the 1970s, Pallas began making life-size plywood cut-outs of real people and gave them to those subjects to write something, anything, on the back and abandon them in a public place.

[15] Sun Microsystems stepped in and purchased “Hewlett & Packard” and put them back “on the street.” [16] The trio of artists created a travelogue that allowed anyone who participated in the project, by picking up the hitchhikers on the side of the road and taking them further in the journey to document that portion of the trip and were rewarded with a share of ownership in the artwork.

[17] In 2011, Pallas was commissioned by Columbia University to place tracker equipped Hitchikers of Saul Steinberg, Thelonious Monk and a woman of the Lenape tribe on locations in Manhattan as part of an Artists' Game exhibit.

In 2012 Pallas created a series of portraits of sixteen people who left an indelible stamp on the youngest generation of artists in Detroit.

When money is deposited into the ear, the sculpture responds with Dutch accented audio recordings of observations about life and art.

Jim Pallas: Electronic Sculptor[9] is a documentary produced by Academy Award-winning Sue Marx Films.