WEN-YING TSAI (; October 13, 1928 – January 2, 2013) was a Chinese-American artist, best known as a pioneer in the field of cybernetic and kinetic sculpture. Tsai was an early adopter of an extensive array of innovative materials, such as, but not limited to, Day-Glo pigment, LED lights, fiberglass rods, 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.Shao Dazhen, Perfect Union of Art, Science and Technology: the cybernetic sculpture of Tsai Wen-Ying, Cybernetic Sculptures: the world of Tsai Wen-Ying, exhibition catalog, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, 1997, p. 157

The philosopher Vilem Flusser wrote of Tsai's work: 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.Vilem Flusser, Aspects and Prospects of Tsai's Work, Art International, March 1974

Early life and education

Wen-Ying Tsai was born in 1928 in Xiamen, Fujian, China. He grew up in the Nanjing Decade, a period of economic and civil strife. In 1939, he moved to Shanghai, to study chemical engineering at Ta Tung University. In 1949, he moved to Hong Kong before moving to the United States in 1950. He attended the University of Michigan, receiving a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering (BSME) in 1953.

Engineering Career After graduating from the University of Michigan, Tsai moved to New York to work as an architectural engineer. He worked for a number of acclaimed clients such as Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Synergetics, and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.Joann Cerrito, Editor, Contemporary Artists, St. James Press, 1993, p. 1183 Working as an engineer by day, Tsai explored other interests by taking courses at night. He pursued artistic studies at the Art Students League, took courses in political science and economics at the New School for Social Research, and attended modern dance classes with Erick Hawkins.

Early Career as an Artist Tsai pivoted away from engineering and devoted himself to art in 1963 when he was awarded the 1963 John Hay Whitney Fellowship Grant for Painting for two abstract works, Untitled I and Untitled II. In this period of renewed commitment to his art, Tsai was inspired by Op Art and began to incorporate optical effects, in his painting. This prompted him to use fluorescent, Day-Glo pigments, accompanied by ultra-violet light, in his works, making him the first artist to incorporate the material into paintings. In addition to the fluorescent pigments, Tsai also began to create perceptual effects by layering materials, as seen in his painting Random Field, which utilizes a layer of perforated bakelite, a synthetic plastic, over canvas. Random Field was included in the seminal Museum of Modern Art exhibition, The Responsive Eye, in 1965.  

It was also in 1965 that Tsai first incorporated motors into his work to create kinetic sculpture. His first kinetic sculpture was titled Multi-Kinetic Wall, which was exhibited at the Amel Gallery (New York) and at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Made up of 32 individual units, each unit consisted of multiple gyroscopic forms painted in Day-Glo pigments. Each unit was independently motorized and could be operated individually. Art historian Sam Hunter described the work:1965 continued to be an important year for Tsai. He had a "Eureka" moment while on a fellowship at the Edward MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. While contemplating the sunlight shimmering in the trees, he had a sudden inspiration to use his engineering background to create art work that could replicate natural phenomena, such as the effect of light. Tsai found a starting point in the kinetic work of constructivist artist Naum Gabo and evoked the shimmering light with a stroboscope, but he decided that "the shimmering was not enough." He worked to find a way that the viewer could interact directly with the work of art. This pursuit led him to a major innovation: the use of a feedback control system. With the feedback control system, the sculpture responded to viewer-created noise with harmonic vibration.These first "feedback" pieces were shown at Howard Wise Gallery in New York in 1968 at an important show titled Cybernetic Sculpture. This solo exhibition featured a number of vibrating artworks made of stainless steel rods and polished metallic plates, as well as a number of his experiments with stroboscopic lights and audio feedback control. Art critic Robert Hughes evokes them vividly:A grove of slender stainless-steel rods rises from a plate. This base vibrates at 30 cycles per second; the rods flex rapidly, in harmonic curves. 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 undulationRobert Hughes, Shaped by Strobe, Time, October 2, 1972Jonathan 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. 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.Jonathan Benthall, Artists and Technicians, Times Literary Supplement, October 31, 1968, 1229Later that year, one of these cybernetic works, Cybernetic Sculpture System No. 1, won the first prize in an E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology) competition. The same work was included in the mammoth international exhibition Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age, guest curated by Pontus Hulten for the Museum of Modern Art in New York.:67 Inclusion in Hulten's exhibition was an incredibly important moment for Tsai's career, not only in terms of art world recognition, but in revealing the inequities of the art world. In response to an incident at Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age, Tsai and a number of other artists, including Takis, founded the Art Workers' Coalition, a coalition of artists that sought to implement museum reform and underscore "issues relating to the political and social responsibility of the art community."

Another breakthrough moment in Tsai's career came in 1968 when Tsai was invited by György Kepes to the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT. Tsai was one of 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. Tsai remained at MIT CAVS until 1971.

Mid-Late Career

In the early 1970s, Tsai moved with his family to Paris and showed with the Denise René Gallery and had extensive exhibitions in Europe. He continued to innovate in his practice, introducing new elements into his sculptures. One of the most important works of this era was Upward Falling Fountain (1979), which created the illusion of water droplets rising upward in response to viewer-created sound. By attaching a fountainhead he designed to a motor suspended from the ceiling, Tsai created using stroboscopic light the illusion of a slow-moving, spiral column of water; with audio feedback control, a viewer could then make the water droplets rise upwards by simply clapping, yelling, or stomping. Tsai's use of audio feedback evolved in relation to his use of light sources. Interactive sound-controlled works coupled his audio feedback control units with neon transformers and LED lights. In the 1980s, Tsai began to create computer controlled works. The first of these, Computer Column (1980), was controlled by a program that controlled a number of flap units, recycled from defunct train or airport announcement boards. The flap units were painted in day-glo colors and flipped to reveal choreographed patterns and create a rhythmic sound. Other computer-programmed works created choreographed patterns using a variety of light sources.

Tsai received multiple public commissions, which prompted him to take on more architectural work. He designed large fountains for Hong Kong’s Landmark Building and Singapore’s Raffles Tower. When IBM commissioned a work for an exhibition entitled “Computers and Art,” Tsai took inspiration from the computer programs of his flap unit and light-based works, programming water pumps to dance to music.

Tsai participated in a number of groundbreaking exhibitions in this period of his career. One of these was Frank Popper's Electra exhibition. 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...Another time, Popper elaborated:

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, 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.Frank Popper, Art--Action and Participation, New York University Press, 1975, p. 214

Throughout his career, Tsai remained devoted to the motorized sculptures that launched him to the forefront of the cybernetic vanguard. At the end of his career, he returned to his work with rods. Tsai’s later works gathered rods of different sizes, materials, and forms and resembled bouquets of flowers.

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 was fond of recalling that the Tsai twins were the first of the "Center babies".Otto Piene, The Tsai Ballet: Trembling without Fear, Cybernetic Sculptures: the world of Tsai Wen-Ying, exhibition catalog, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, 1997, p. 177

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.Richard Kostelanetz, SoHo: The Rise and Fall of an Artists' Colony, Routledge, 2003, p. 181-185

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.

Legacy