Wen-Ying Tsai

Wen-Ying Tsai (; October 13, 1928 – January 2, 2013) was a Chinese-American pioneer cybernetic sculptor and kinetic artist best known for creating sculptures using electric motors, stainless steel rods, stroboscopic light, and audio feedback control. As one of the first Chinese-born artists to achieve international recognition in the 1960s, Tsai was an inspiration to generations of Chinese artists around the world.
Biography.
Wen-Ying Tsai was born in 1928 in Xiamen, Fujian, China, and emigrated to the United States in 1950, where he attended the University of Michigan, receiving a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering (BSME) in 1953. Moving to New York City after graduation, Tsai embarked on a successful career as an architectural engineer working for clients such as Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Synergetics, and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. While working as an engineer by day, Tsai pursued artistic studies at the Art Students League at night, while also taking courses in political science and economics at the New School for Social Research. Tsai also attended modern dance classes with Erick Hawkins.
In 1963, Tsai won a John Hay Whitney Fellowship for Painting, after which he decided to leave engineering and devote full-time to the arts. After a three-month trip in Europe, he returned to New York and began to make three-dimensional constructions using optical effects, fluorescent paints, and ultra-violet light. These wary works were later selected for "The Responsive Eye", an exhibition curated by William Seitz at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Unsatisfied with his static sculptures, Tsai began to introduce movement using motors. He created "Multi-kinetic Wall" in 1965, which was exhibited in "Art Turned On" at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. 
Art historian Sam Hunter described the work:
But it was ultimately during a fellowship at the Edward MacDowell Colony in 1965 that Tsai had his "Eureka!" moment. While contemplating the sunlight shimmering in the trees, he had a sudden insight to use his engineering background to create art work that replicates natural phenomena. Finding a starting point in the work of constructivist artist Naum Gabo, Tsai took a quantum leap deciding that "the shimmering was not enough" and that what was needed was a way that the viewer could interact with the work. It was that inspiration that eventually lead him to the idea to use a stroboscope coupled with a feedback control system.:
Sam Hunter writes:
During this time, along with international friends including Takis, Tsai was a founding member of the Art Workers' Coalition that sought to implement museum reform and underscore "issues relating to the political and social responsibility of the art community."
In 1969, Tsai was invited by György Kepes to the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT. There, amongst the "first Fellows", a lively group of like-minded artists (including Jack Burnham, Otto Piene, Takis, Harold Tovish, Stan VanDerBeek), Tsai met Harold "Doc" Edgerton, the engineer who developed the modern electronic stroboscope.
In the early 1970s, Tsai moved with his family to Paris and showed with the Denise René Gallery and had extensive exhibitions in Europe. During these years, he befriended fellow Chinese artists residing in Paris including Peng Wants and Chu Teh-Chun and became very passionate about cultural exchange between China and the West. In 1979, Tsai and his friend the composer Wen-chung Chou were part of the first delegation of artists from the US to the People's Republic of China. This eventually lead Tsai and his wife Pei-De to establish The Committee for Chinese Artists Intercultural Movement (CCAIM), a pioneering non-profit organization that brought mainland Chinese artists to exhibit in the United States in the 1980s. After Paris, Tsai settled permanently in New York City. In 2006, Tsai and Pei-De established the Tsai Art and Science Foundation to support and bring awareness to endeavors that are at the intersection of the arts and sciences.
Works.
Tsai's cybernetic sculpture works have always been a challenge for writers to describe. Art critic Robert Hughes evokes them vividly:
A grove of slender stainless-steel rods rises from a plate. This vase vibrates at 30 cycles per second; the rods flex rapidly, in harmonic curves. Set in a dark room, they are lit by strobes. The pulse of the flashing lights varies--they are connected to sound and proximity sensors. The result is that when one approaches a Tsai or makes a noise in its vicinity, the thing responds. The rods appear to move; there is a shimmering, a flashing, an eerie ballet of metal, whose apparent movements range from stillness to jittering, and back to a slow, indescribably sensuous undulation.
The philosopher Vilem Flusser wrote of Tsai's work:
 There can be no doubt that Tsai's phenomena (whether they be works of art in the strict sense, or whether they be fantastic artifices) are extremely important. They show what promises and dangers may be in here in a "play," if it is proposed by a great artist. Because, even if Tsai's phenomena be considered artifices, there can be no doubt that Tsai is a great artist. Not because what he does is pleasant, or because he proposes a play, or because he represents the spirit of our times, but because he reveals to us, through artifice or works of art, the concrete experience of a future full of promise or abysmal danger. 
Jonathan Benthall was one of the first to appreciate Tsai's sculpture. In 1968, he wrote:
The work of art may be regarded as a machine programmed by the artist to produce a deferred output. Its objective is survival--by survival I mean not continued acclamation but a continued ability to stand intact as the organized system that the artist originally intended. To survive it must operate within a culturally accepted genre of some kind. ... That is why an artist like Tsai is likely to be so valuable; not because he is an innovator (all his techniques taken separately have been used before) but because he has the kind of authority that establishes a stylistic tradition.
Tsai's interactive sculpture marked a major step in the development of kinetic art:
A major portion of luminist and kinetic art originated in Europe, beginning with the formation in 1960 of GRAV (Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel)
by eleven artists of different nationalities, all resident in Paris. Wen-Ying Tsai is an [American] associate who showed with that group at the Galerie Denise Rene, which made its reputation on technology art. Tsai is a Chinese-born sculptor now living in New York. The slender, stainless steel "cybernetic" rods of his sculpture vibrate in different patterns in response to electronic impulses, to the clapping of human hands, or to the flashes of a strobe light. In the artist's words, they are designed to simulate "the intensity of a living creature." While the contemporary interest in light and kinetic sculpture is in a sense traditional, and dates back at least to Naum Gabo, to Marcel Duchamp, Moholy-Nagy and the Bauhaus, only in the postwar era has the artist tried consciously to use available computer and electronic technology to create robot works of art which can be activated environmentally.
Frank Popper elaborates:
As far as the sensory experience of the spectator goes, the most outstanding American kinetic artist is unquestionably the Chinese-born Wen-Ying Tsai. His pieces, which are perfect on the technological level, serve the primary purpose of giving a complete visual experience to the spectator, whose sound solicitations provoke a choreographic, chromatic and rhythmic response in the 'cybernetic sculptures'. ...
György Kepes has commented enthusiastically on the 'magic rhythms emanating from this swaying, dancing steel trembling with life', and he has also noted the sense of 'an instant fellowship, a spontaneous celebration' which is re-created in their presence. As he concludes: 'Rhythm is friendship and in Tsai's work there is friendship of light, sound and our own heart-beats.'
If this appraisal testifies to the success with which Tsai affects the sensory and emotional responses of the spectator, we must not neglect the fact that he is also addressing himself to reason and the scientific element in his audience. In effect, the observer can enter an almost mathematical relationship with these works, and sharpen his perceptual powers through the exact assessment of the various aesthetic parameters of vibration, sound, colour, wave movement, etc.
Richard Kostelanetz writes about Tsai's cybernetic water works:
Of his other kinetic sculptures, "Upward-Falling Fountain" (1979) is the most impressive, creating an illusion that must be seen to be believed. As the water falling from a vibrating shower head is illuminated by a strobe, the droplets are caught dancing in response to sound; at certain strobe speeds, the droplets appear to be moving upwards, violating all rules of gravity. "Living Fountain" (1980-88) is a yet larger water sculpture, incorporating a showerhead three feet in diameter, plus three concentric circles of water jets, all installed above a basin twelve by sixteen feet. Here the strobe is designed to respond to combinations of changes in audible music, random sensors, audio-feedback controls, and a computer program. 
In conclusion, Frank Popper writes in his "Electra" exhibition catalog about Tsai's essential contribution:
The role played by Tsai, the American artist of Chinese origin, in this context cannot be overestimated, in his most varied cybernetic sculptures in the "Electra" exhibition are perfect examples of an artistic comment, perhaps an artistic solution to one of the principal problems raised in this show: the situation of the artist between technology, at a critical point of its passage from the mechanical to the electronic era, and man's natural or artificial environment...
This transition from the stage of the electro-mechanical period and its art to the electronic era with its cultural manifestations is accompanied by a new assessment of the machine. If Oswald Sprengler rebelled against the fact the "lord of the world"
became the slave of the machine, that civilization itself has become a machine which does everything mechanically, George Friedmann has observed that the worker has stopped being the servant of the machine to become its overseer. It is up to man's political intelligence, and to his intelligence alone, to decide to what ends he will use the power put at his disposal.
East and West.
Vilem Flusser's analysis of Tsai's work delves into his place in both the Eastern and Western traditions.
 Possibly Tsai himself does not stand within Western tradition. The analysis of his phenomena seems to reveal this. In that case the arguments just advanced cannot touch him. Possibly he stands within an Oriental tradition, for which (so at least it looks like to a Western observer) man is not a being radically separated form all others. For such a tradition man may feel deeply united with animals, plants, and other types of beings. He can therefore, conceive of them much more as "others" than we can. And the phenomena Tsai produces are then, in their naive, plant-like Gestalten, "true others" If I can dialogue with a plant (and Oriental tradition seems to suggest this), then a fortiori, I can dialogue with the phenomena Tsai is producing. Such an hypothesis of Tsai's position would explain his approach to the problem posed by the series "thing-other." He could then still see others (even in a stone), where we no longer can see them. In this case Tsai may say that his is an important Oriental contribution to the Western (and bankrupt) attempt to free man from the determining effects of objects of culture. He may say that he is using Western models and Western methods from an Oriental approach, in order to try and solve the universally human problem of freedom from determination. And he will be completely correct in thus answering the above advanced objections.
Tsai and Taoism.
Art historian Donald Kuspit finds in Tsai's art a Taoist outlook:
Personal life.
Tsai met his wife, Pei-De Chang, in New York City in 1967. They were married in London in 1968 during the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition in which Tsai participated. The couple had twin sons two years later when Tsai was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT; their friend Otto Piene is fond of recalling that the Tsais' twins were the first of the "Center babies."
The Tsai family spent part of the 1970s in Paris before settling down permanently in SoHo, New York where they lived in a loft space that they renovated themselves. Richard Kostelanetz has written about the Tsais in SoHo in his book "SoHo: The Rise and Fall of an Artists' Colony".
Death.
Tsai died in Manhattan, New York, on January 2, 2013. He was survived by his wife Pei-De; sons and spouses Lun-Yi London (Michelle) and Ming-Yi Gyorgy (Marloes); grandchildren Sakhaya, Kelsyn, Lina, Flora and Nereus. Artist Otto Piene and composer Wen-chung Chou were among those who spoke at Tsai's funeral service.
Selected exhibitions.
Solo.
1961 Ruth Sherman Gallery, New York
1964 & 1965 Amel Gallery, New York
1968 Howard Wise Gallery, New York
1970 Alpha Gallery<br>
Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, Germany
1971 Hayden Gallery, Massachusetts Institute of Technology<br>
Ontario Science Center, Toronto<br>
Galérie Françoise Mayer, Brussels<br>
University of Pittsburgh<br>
Michael Berger Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA
1972 Galérie Denise René, Paris<br>
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC<br>
Galérie Denise René, New York
1973 Galérie Denise René/Hans Mayer, Düsseldorf. <br>
Musee d'Art Contemporain, Montreal.
1975 Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Caracas, Venezuela.
1978 Wildenstein Art Center, Houston.<br>
Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas.<br>
1979 Hong Kong Museum of Art.
1980 Isetan Museum of Art, Tokyo.
1983 Galerie Denise Rene, Paris.
1989 National Museum of History, Taipei.
1990 Taiwan Museum of Art, Taichung, Taiwan.
1997 National Museum of China, Beijing, China.
Group.
1965<br>
"The Responsive Eye," Museum of Modern Art, New York<br>
"The New Eyes," Chrysler Art Museum, Provincetown, Massachusetts<br>
City Art Museum of St. Louis<br>
"Art in Science," Albany Institute of History and Art<br>
"Art Turned On," Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.<br>
"Art in Science," organized by Smithsonian Institution, Washington
DC<br>
National Academy of Science, Washington, DC<br>
1968 <br>
"Cybernetic Serendipity," Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.<br>
"The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age", Museum of Modern Art, New York
1969<br>
"Cybernetic Serendipity," Corcoran Gallery of Art,
Washington, DC<br>
"Howard Lipman Collection," Whitney Museum of
American Art, New York.<br>
"Master Pieces of Modern Art," Galerie Denise Rene/Hans
Mayer, Krefeld, Germany.<br>
"Explorations," Hayden Gallery, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology<br> National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, DC<br>
3e Salon International des Galeries Pilotes, Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts, Lausanne<br>
Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris.<br>
Pittsburgh International, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute,
Pittsburgh.<br>
"Struktur Schwingung Dynarnik," Kunsthalle, Nuremberg.<br>
"L'Art et les Technologies," Ville de Vitry-sur-Seine, France.<br>
"Multiple Interaction Team," Museum of Science and Industry,
Chicago<br>
"Salon International des Composants Electroniques," Paris.<br>
"Custom and Culture," US Custom House, New York.<br>
"Art of the Space Era," Huntsville Museum of Art, Alabama.<br>
"The Expanding Visual World," The Museum of Fun,
Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo.
1983<br>"Electra," Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris.<br>
1984 <br>"Carte Blanche Denise Rene." Paris.<br>
1986<br> "Les Machines Sentimentales," Avignon.<br>
"La Biennale Di Venezia," Venice.<br>
"Energetic Art," La Malmaison, Cannes.<br>
1987 <br>"Artware, Kunst und Elektronik," Hanover International Fair.<br>
"Artware," Düsseldorf Landsmuseum.<br>
"Art in the Computer Age," Everson Museum of Art,
Syracuse, New York.<br>
"Art in the Computer Age," Cincinnati Contemporary Art
Center, Cincinnati, Ohio.<br>
1988 <br>"Computers and Art," IBM Gallery of Science and Art,
New York.<br>
"Lights OROT," Yeshiva University Museum, New York.<br>
"Interaction," The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art,
Connecticut.<br>
"Vraiment Faux," La Fondation Cartier, Jouey-en-Jossas,
France.<br>
"Art Construit, Lumiere, Mouvement," EPAD, Galerie La
Defense, Paris.<br>
"Art in the Computer Age," Center for the Fine Arts, Miami.<br>
1989<br> "Phenomena Art," Pan-Asian Expo '89, Saibu Gas Museum,
Fukuoka, Japan.<br>
KSP, Kawasaka - Kanagawa Prefecture.<br>
"Visiona," Vienna Messe-WienerFestwochen.<br>
"Visiona," Zurich.
1990 <br>"Image du Futur," Montreal, Canada.
1991 <br>"ARTEC '91, The International Biennale in Nagoya."Japan.
1995 <br>"Kwangju International Biennale" in Korea.<br>
"Osaka Triennale 1995" - Sculpture.
2001 <br>
"Denise René, l'intrépide," Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
2008 <br>
"Olympic Games, 2008," Beijing
2010 <br>
"Expo 2010 Shanghai," Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai
Further reading.
1968 <br>
Tsai, Cybernetic Sculpture at Howard Wise Gallery, Arts Magazine 42/8 (Summer). <br>
"Some More Beginnings," Experiments in Art and Technology. New York. <br>
A. S. Parisi, "The Kinetic Movement: Technology Paces the Arts," Product Engineering 39/25 (December). <br>
D. K. Merris, "The Engineer and His Profession," Product Engineering 39/25 (December).<br>
K. G. Pontus-Hulten, The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age. exhibition catalog, Museum of Modern Art, New York.
1969 <br>
J. Chandler, "Art in the Electric Age," Art International Xlll/2 (February). <br>
F. Newgan, "Die Maschine in der Kunst," Kunstweek 22/43 (February). <br>
Jonathan Benthall, "Cybernetic Sculpture of Tsai," Studio International, 177/909 (March). <br>
1970<br>
"Explorations," National Collection of Fine Arts, 1/2 (May). <br>
B. E. Bradin. "Tsai-bernetics," Boston Arts, 3/6 (June). <br>
Frank Popper, L'Art cinetique. Gautier-Villars. <br>
1971<br>
Irmeline Lebeer, "Les Sculptures Cybernetiques de Wen-Ying Tsai," Chroniques de L'Art Vivant 26 (December) <br> Nicolas Calas, lcons+lmages of the Sixties. Ed. Dutton. <br>
1972<br>
Jasia Reichardt, "Engineer Extraordinary," New Scientist 52/777 (January). <br>
J. Benthall, Science and Technology in Art Today. Ed. Thames & Hudson, London. <br>
Robert Hughes, "Shaped by Strobe," Time (October 2) <br>
1973<br>
H. Dufrenne, "L'Art en Occident." Le Coumer, UNESCO (March). <br>
Sam Hunter, American Art of the Twentieth Century. Ed. H. Abrams.<br>
1974 <br>
J. Reichardt, "Twenty Years of Symbiosis Between Art and Science," Impact on Society, UNESCO (January–March). <br>
Vilem Flusser, "Aspects and Prospects of Tsai's Work," Art International (March). <br>
J. Benthall, "Cybernetic Sculpture of Tsai," Art International (March 1974). <br>
1975 <br>
J. Reichardt, Le Temps et la Cybernetique. Ed. Micromegas. <br>
F. Popper, Art. Action. Participation (tome 1). Ed. Dumond Schauberg<br>
F. Popper, La Creativite. Aujourd'hui (tome II). Ed. Dumont Schauberg<br>
F. Popper, Die Kinetische Kunst und lhre Folgen (tome III). Ed. Dumont Schauberg. <br>
L. P. S. Resumen 12 October 1975, Caracas. <br>
1977<br>
S. Lee, "The World of Tsai," Lion Art, Taipei (January). <br>
C. Wong, "Electronic Sculpture of Tsai," Ming Pao Monthly 136 Hong Kong (April). <br>
Liu Nien-Ling, "Cybernetic Sculpture of Tsai," ~BB~BW, (November). <br>
1979<br>
Itsuo Sakane, A Museum of Fun. Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo. <br>
Sunny and Horace Yuen, South-North Pole. 1Jtfi 107 (April). <br>
1983<br>
J. Benthall, "Les Sculptures Cibernetiques de Tsai," Cimaise No. 162-163. <br>
F. Popper. "La Palette du Me Siecle," Revue Franpase de L'Electricite (December) <br>
Michael Gibson, International Herald Tribune, December 15, Paris. <br>
1984 <br>
A. Liot. Art Press (January) Paris. <br>
C.Winter-Irving, "Cybernetic Sculpture," Craft Arts (October), Australia. <br>
J. Benthall, "The Promises of Technological Art," Landmark Program, Dallas. <br>
1985<br>
Mp. Prat, "Les faits culturels." Encyclopaedia Universalis. <br>
Shu Zhang. "Shi Jie Meishu." World Art (December), Beijing. <br>
1987<br>
John Woodford, "The Electrifying Artist," Michigan Today (February). <br>
Cynthia Goodman, Digital Visions: Computers and Art. Abrams. <br>
David Galloway, Artware - Kunst und Elecktronik. Econ Verlag. <br>
1988<br>
J. Beil, "Waterworks." OMNI (June) L. Lothian, Abstract Computerism, (June). <br>
Les Krantz, The New York Art Review. <br>
M. Mifflin, "Off-the-Wall Art," ELLE (September) <br>
J. Fodor, "Wired for Sound," OMNI (September) <br>
D. Galloway, "Asthtik des Immateriellen," Kunstforum (December) <br>
Yeshiva University Museum, Light OROT. CAVS/M.I.T. <br>
E.Goldring, Otto Piene und das CAVS/M.I.T. Deutscher Kunstlerbund, Karlsruhe. <br>
1989<br>
T.S. Liang, "Tsai's Motion Sensitive Sculptures," Hsiung Shih Art Monthly, October '89. Taipei. <br>
S. Hunter, "The Cybernetic Sculpture ofTsai Wen-Ying" National Museum of History, Taipei. <br>
1991<br>
The 2nd International Biennale in Nagova - ARTEC '91. Nagoya City Art Museum. <br>
Contemporary Masterworks. St. James Press. <br>
1993<br>
Richard Kostelanetz, Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes. Capella. <br>
F. Popper, Art of the Electronic Age. Abrams. <br>
1994<br>
Mu Ling, "Tsai's Cybernetic Art," Ming Pao Monthly (January), Hong Kong. <br>
1995<br>
Paul DeGroot and Dick Oliver, Internet Graphics Gallery. QUE. <br>
1996<br>
Contemporary Artists, 4th edition, St. James Press. <br>
T. Grieder, Artist and Audience, 2nd edition, Brown & Benchmark publishers.<br>
2001<br>
R. Kostelanetz, "Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes, Second Edition", Routledge.
2003<br>
R. Kostelanetz, "SoHo: The Rise and Fall of an Artists' Colony", Routledge.