Event 1: COLOR LIGHT MOTION: Featuring Ryszard Kluszczyński – presenting artist Wen-Ying Tsai

 

The first event I have chosen to attend is the online event, “COLOR LIGHT MOTION: Ryszard Kluszczyński – presenting artist Wen-Ying Tsai.” The type of art that was presented is known as Cybernetic Art. Ryszard Kluszczyński is the Head of Department of New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Lodz, Poland. Wen-Ying Tsai was an American artist born in China. He is one of the forerunners of Cybernetic Art, having graduated as an engineer then studying art. Painting was his main interest for decades–optical painting and optical perceptual painting with a technical engineering approach. 

1968 was a very prolific period for Wen-Ying Tsai. Pictured below is one of his first works entitled Harmonic Sculpture #10. 

Wen-Ying Tsai Harmonic Sculpture #10

This event was an excellent example of how science and art can come together in the “third culture” referred to by C.P. Snow (Snow, The Two Cultures) and I highly recommend it to other students as a clear example of what we are looking at in this course, DESMA 9.

Wen-Ying Tsai Cybernetic Sculpture System #1

Cybernetic Art is defined as “contemporary art that builds upon the legacy of cybernetics, where feedback involved in the work takes precedence over the traditional aesthetic and material concerns” (Wikipedia, Cybernetic art). According to Kluszczyński, people say cybernetic art was important in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, but not later. However, in his option, there are good reasons not to agree with this because we are now facing the process of transformation of cybernetic ideas, and it is being developed under different names. This makes sense especially today with the emergence of artificial intelligence and AI art. Another expert who is looking forward to seeing how AI will be incorporated into Cybernetic Art is Jasia Reichardt. She discusses Cybernetic Art in her book Cybernetics, Art, and Ideas (Reichardt, Cybernetics, art and ideas).

In 1993 Wen-Ying Tsai said, “[s]cientific innovations when properly oriented to serve humanity…can be an effective means of delivering us from our present environmental chaos into a world of dynamic ecological equilibrium–a new promised land for all richness in lives and vitalities.” He was able to enjoy this ecological equilibrium later in life, according to his son London, when he moved to upstate New York. There Wen-Ying Tsai was finally able to spend his days wandering around dozen acres of land thinking about how to shape the land, where to plant the trees, having lived in the city – this need was underlying his artwork, says London.

Wen-Ying Tsai with his wife in upstate New York

Works Cited

Reichardt, J. (1971). Cybernetics, art and ideas. Studio Vista.

Snow, C. P. “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.” Cambridge University Press, 1959.

Wikimedia Foundation. (2024, January 11). Cybernetic art. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetic_art. Accessed on April 28, 2024



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 4: Medicine + Technology + Art

Image
  Humans have been cutting open bodies since almost the beginning of history (Vesna Week 4 Lecture, Part 1 ). Scientists used to cut sections of cadavers and photograph them (see below) until the 20 th century brought new technologies to help us look inside bodies without cutting them open. Scientist preparing to photograph transverse section of human head (Vesna Week 4, Part 1 ) Two familiar methods of looking inside the body without cutting it open are the x-ray and the MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) which was invented by Raymond Vahan Damadian. Dr. Damadian became his own first MRI patient because nobody else was willing to get inside the MRI. However, when he got into the machine it didn’t work and the reason turned out to be that he was too big, so a student had to get in instead. As stated by Silvia Casini in her article, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) as Mirror and Portrait: MRI Configurations between Science and the Arts , “magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and its f...
Read more

Week 8: Nanotechnology + Art

Image
  The materials that most interested me this week were Dr. James K. Gimzewski’s YouTube videos entitled Nanotechnology for artists (1). My favorite part was the images shown below of shapes made by Don Eigler using Scanning Tunneling Microscopy which uses a needle whose tip measures about one hundredth of an atomic diameter. The needle rasters across surfaces to make images, in a similar process to the one used in a cathode ray tube, the original type of television (2). Patterns created using the Scanning Tunnel Microscope Even more powerful is the Atomic Force Microscope which is able to image molecules in a way that hadn’t been achieved before with the Scanning Tunnel Microscope (2). Today there are thousands of nanotechnology products on the market and many of them are invisible.  Atomic Force Microscopy Nanoparticles are sized between 100 and 1 nanometers, and they have existed for a long time. In Roman times they were used to make pottery out of gold that looks one c...
Read more

DESMA-9 Week 1

Image
Hi, everyone! My name is Laura and I have experience of both cultures. I grew up in an artistic household. My dad was a music teacher, and my mum is a fine artist. I began playing music when I was 3. The first thing I remember liking at school was painting. I loved writing stories when I was a child. However, I, like many of us, was told at a young age that pursuing a career in the Arts was less sensible due to the financial aspect. It was interesting to learn that, as Kevin Kelly writes, “Science has traditionally accepted…money with fewest political strings attached” (1). I went to university for Law but quickly realized it wasn’t for me. Next, I went to university for Applied Physics. The same thing happened again so I left Scotland and moved to Ireland. There I began a career in acting, which brought me to Los Angeles. During the pandemic, I decided to go back to college. First, I did Psychology, but it turned out that Philosophy was my favorite subject. I am now a Philosophy major...
Read more