PDCON:Exhibition/Alexandre Castonguay: Tafel: Difference between revisions

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 Artist: Alexandre Castonguay
-Short description: ''Tafel'' is part of the ''inscriptions'' series of drawing machines.
+Short Summary
-'Inscriptions' consists in the development of artworks that analyze, inscribe and encode written information. At a time when the written form is undergoing a massive migration to a digital format that promises quick access to vast amounts of data but also shifts the mode of experience and attention given to its contents, the artworks tend to give a tangible form to information, to re-embody the digital through writing at the time of the disappearance of cultural forms perceived as obsolete.
+Tafel consists in a chalk drawing machine mounted on a blackboard.  It
+takes its input from the texts produced by the participants for the
-This occurs through a digital and electronic process that revives old protocols like HPGL (Hewlett Packard Graphics Language) and reclaimed stepper motors to augment a blackboard into a chalk drawing machine. It accepts texts sent by users via sms or email, processes them and inscribes a response in the form of written text or diagram in the hand of Joseph Beuys, whose ‘tafel’ lectures form the basis of this participative work.
+PureData convention and creates schematics based on a comparison of these
+texts to a database of Joseph Beuys' writings.  It puts into play the
-Beuys lectures-performances often made use of blackboards to record and illustrate their contents. Although some were famously erased by conscientious janitors (as they were meant to be), many survive in galleries and museums.  They record the artist’s thoughts on art and society. Through their idealism, they often mirror that of pioneers of electronic arts, but there seems to have been a disconnect between them.
+diagrammatic representation of visual programming with the schematic
+drawings produced by the artist during his Tafel lectures / performances.
-The uncanny hand gesture of the artist, re-embodied by the drawing mechanism, is an occasion to put into play the contents of these early and original writings. Spurred by the participation of the audience through their texts, the drawing machine is not subjected to their primary transcription but inscribes responses to them.
+The contents of the convention, while mostly technical and thus far
+removed from Beuys thinkng, are embodiments of the democratisation of
+access to knowledge, of a  certain utopian vision for art that he shared.
+The self-mythologizing artist' handwriting was made into an HPGL font that
+is used alternately with a non-descript Hershey sans-serif font.  The
+chalk drawing head makes an uncanny and robotic attempt at translating the
+authentic gesture of the artist.  While acknowledging the spirit of Beuys'
+lectures, the indexical relationship of writing serves to undermine the
+authorship of the figure of the artist.  Tafel was realized with the help
+of Christian Klippel, Mathieu Bouchard, Pascal Audet and Ken Campbell.
+More information, code and schematics can be found at :
+http://artengine.ca/acastonguay/tafel
+Bio
+Castonguay's practice is based in digital and conceptual art, his works
+uses obsolete technology and open source software. His
+installations and photographic work have been presented in Canada and
+abroad in New York, Beijing, Madrid, Berlin, Beyrouth, São Paulo and
+Graz. His works are included in the collections of the Canada Council
+Art Bank, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Montréal Museum of
+Fine Arts, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée national
+des beaux-arts du Québec, the Canadian Museum of Contemporary
+photography as well as private collections.  He is represented by the
+gallery Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain (http://pfoac.com).
+Professor at UQAM's École des arts visuels et médiatiques in Montréal, he
+studied at
+the University of Ottawa (B.F.A. 1991 and B.A. 1993) and at Concordia
+University, Montréal (M.F.A. 2004). He is a founding member of the
+not-for-profit media lab Artengine.