Page 44 - Studio International - March 1969

The cybernetic The failure of most contemporary artists to Such has been the aim, explicit or implicit, of
come to terms with technology has often been many of the modern artists who have used
sculpture of noted. I regard this as a radical failure, not machinery to make artifacts. Our attitude
today to machinery is such a compound of
one which can be easily rectified by a few
symposiums, competitions and exhibitions dependence, admiration and fear; and the
Tsai Wen-ying (valuable as these may be). It is the failure of relationship between man and machine is so
artists in particular: if the word 'artist' is to fundamental to the twentieth-century en-
maintain both the heroic associations due to vironment—both physical and metaphysical
Jonathan Benthall the romantic movement and the older associa- —that it is not surprising if many artists have
tion with technical skills, then the artist must begun to explore this relationship in various
be someone who assumes an uncommon re- ways. One of the most interesting and mature
sponsibility for the uses to which the technical is the Chinese-born American artist Tsai.
skills of his time are put. It is also the failure of One of Tsai's pieces was shown at the ICA
our educational system, which being frag- `Cybernetic Serendipity' exhibition in
mented into separate disciplines has a tendency London last summer, but he has not yet had
to produce fragmented human beings. An a one-man show outside New York. In May
educational revolution, like other revolutions, 1968 he exhibited some eight pieces at the
must be sparked off by new ideas and new Howard Wise Gallery, New York. The
models of humanity. Some individuals must gallery was dimly lit, but a bluish spotlight
resolve personally the cultural tensions of their was trained on each piece, blinking on and
day before these tensions can be resolved in off faster than the eye could count. This high-
school curricula. What is called for is a new frequency strobe-flashing, as it is called (each
defining of artistic integrity, a new fullness of flash lasts about one-millionth of a second) is
response to the complexities of the environment. the technical device used to achieve a