Event Blog #3: COLOR LIGHT MOTION: Featuring Ryszard Kluszczyński

This weekend, I joined the Zoom event Color Light Motion, featuring Ryszard Kluszczyński. The event discussed the works of Wen-Ying Tsai and the role of cybernetics in contemporary art.

Although cybernetics is not a heated topic nowadays, it brought fascination to lots of artists and intellectuals in the 1950s and 60s (Pearl). The terms cybernetics and contemporary art are brand new concepts to me and they seemed to be not related as cybernetics refers to the approach for exploring regulatory systems, their structures, constraints, and possibilities. After taking this class (Desma 9), I started to be aware of the connection between science and art but this topic truly surprised me. After the Zoom event, I learned that the application of cybernetics in contemporary art is a great example of exchanging information across lines of discipline and discovering common patterns (Dixon).  Take the work by Wen-Ying Tsai, Upwards Falling Fountain, as an example, the art piece organically combines the reversal of physical principles with the behavior of the visiting audience. 

Picture 1: Upwards Falling Fountain (Tsai), screenshot during the event


I would also like to discuss the artist, Wen-Ying Tsai, whose son was invited to the event today. Wen-Ying Tsai is a Chinese-American and according to his son, London Tsai, his personal experience in the cross-cultural background had brought unique perspectives to the creation of his artworks. Upon my further research into the background of Wen-Ying Tsai, I learned that he made artworks in a wide range of fields including figurative and abstract painting, optical art, static and kinetic sculpture, cybernetic sculpture, water sculpture, and fountains (Lungo). Thanks to his works, we can now catch a glimpse of the understanding of cybernetics in that era and its contribution to contemporary art.


Pic 2: Wen-Ying Tsai’s educational background, screenshot during the event


Works Cited:


Dixon, Steve. “Discovering Patterns across Disciplines: Cybernetics, Existentialism and Contemporary Arts.” Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, vol. 19, no. 9, 2021, pp. 18–23, https://doi.org/10.54808/JSCI.19.09.18.


Lungo. (n.d.). Art. Tsai Art and Science Foundation. https://tsaifoundation.org/art 


Pearl, Zach. “The Lasting Influence of Cybernetics in Contemporary Art; Theory into Praxis.” 2021 IEEE Conference on Norbert Wiener in the 21st Century (21CW), IEEE, 2021, pp. 1–5, https://doi.org/10.1109/21CW48944.2021.9532580.


Proof of attendance:





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