Event 1: Color Light Motion

After attending the Color Light Motion show, hosted by Ryszard Kluszczyński, I gained a deeper understanding of Wen-Ying Tsai’s workx and how he was a driving force in cybernetic art that continues to be felt today. As Antonio Coelho puts it “Cybernetics uses parallelism between the forms of communication of machines and the process of the human brain in processing information,” (Coelho) which illustrates the potential of cybernetics in bridging the gap between technology, science, and art.


What is interesting about Tsai is that despite his works being extremely creative, and self organizing allowing the viewer to have an influence over their appearance many view his work as “unsatisfactory”. One of his first works that stood out to me was Harmonic Sculpture #10, which was a sculpture that responded to external stimuli such as a stomp or snap initiated by the audience.


Another work that Ryszard mentioned that I found intriguing was the, “Upward Falling Fountain” which displayed water dripping from a showerhead, which appeared to change its trajectory based on the frequency of noise made by visitors. In other words, the viewers had a direct impact on what they saw, which to me demonstrated how cybernetic art is often, “a sort of behavioral Tarot packet, presenting coordinates which can be endlessly reshuffled by the spectator always to produce meaning.” (Ascott) It gave them a means of participating and interacting with the work. 

 


The presence of art that uses technology to create a more dynamic product reminded me almost of cyborgs, defined as an entity “in between human and machine” (Vesna 2012) By utilizing this technology, we allow humans to have a more influential role in their own art and presents many interesting ideas for the future of how we can continue to connect science and art.

 
 
 

Works Cited

Coelho , Antonio. “Cybernetics in Art- A Brief Overview.” Medium, Medium, 4 Aug. 2022, medium.com/@AntonioJSCoelho/cybernetics-in-art-a-brief-overview-150c7ec36635.

Ascott , Roy. “Roy Ascott: Behaviourist Art and the Cybernetic Vision.” CS Colby , cs.colby.edu/courses/J16/cs267/papers/Ascott-BehavioristArt-Cybernetica60.pdf. Accessed 29 Apr. 2024.

Vesna, Victoria "Industrialization, Robotics, Kinetic/Robotic Art Robotics: Part 3" Accessed 28 Apr. 2024

Tsai , Wen-Ying. HARMONIC SCULPTURE #10. Davidbermantfoundation, https://davidbermantfoundation.org/project/harmonic-sculpture-10/. Accessed 27 Apr. 2024.


 

  

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