Fujio Niwa

Fujio Niwa was recruited into CTG by Fujino from the same Watanabe-laboratory cohort at the University of Tokyo, where he was a doctoral student in mechanical engineering and an instructor at the Large-Scale Computer Center.

From early on he was the group’s internal skeptic, asking the question: “Can this really be called art?”

The skeptic was also one of the group’s most productive members. Niwa carries sole idea-and-program credit for Shot Kennedy No. 1 and No. 2 and wrote the program for Kennedy in a Rectangle. With Fujino he designed and built the mechanism of APM No. 1, the automatic painting machine that became Japan’s first interactive cybernetic art installation.

After CTG, Niwa left art to study science. He took a research fellowship at the Studiengruppe für Systemforschung in Heidelberg from 1970 to 1975, where he earned a doctorate in economics and social sciences. He became an associate professor at the University of Tsukuba, served as research director at Japan’s National Institute of Science and Technology Policy, and was a professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies from its founding in 1997 until 2008. He is now professor emeritus.