Elements for Experience

ALEXANDRE CASTONGUAY: ELEMENTS MUSEE D'ART CONTEMPORAIN DE MONTREAL MONTREAL, QUEBEC SEPTEMBER 22, 2005-JANUARY 8, 2006 Computer programmers describe the interconnections between sets of code, text, and images as elegant when they possess an inherent logic. When their internal complexity is embedded with clarity, it enables other users to decipher and master their basic structure to create new meanings of their own. In this manner, recognizing and comprehending the fundamental elements can be understood as a form of translation--from thought, to transmission, to reception. At the heart of contemporary Canadian artist Alexandre Castonguay's multi-disciplinary practice rests a continued questioning and reframing of issues surrounding the interactivity between the art object as content and its presentation and reception. This intellectual consideration is manifested in his ongoing exploration of the gaps between the viewer and the viewed, between practice and result. In early work such as the photographic essay entitled Drawing the Passions (1998), Castonguay created a series of single portraits by digitally layering multiple images of different individuals--each posed to refer to the Cartesian principles for the different expressions of emotion. Using software to create the composite portraits, Castonguay formulated representations of whole emotions, giving them prescriptive titles such as Fear, Joy, and Tranquility. Rather than seamlessly constructing one new face from the many parts--as he could have so readily achieved through digital imaging--Castonguay chose instead to leave the traces of his alterations visible. The ghost-like shadows and subtle color shifts from the varying skin tones evident within each image call into question the effort involved in creating such transformations, while simultaneously echoing the first forays into portrait photography, in which the subject was required to remain perfectly still while the image was captured to avoid sharing the frame with a blurry twin. Likewise, the apparent inability of Castonguay's subjects to remain fixed in each emotion's basic elements reminds the viewer that communication requires the mastery of recognizable patterns within facial expressions to transmit unspoken information. To be understood, these elements must be performed accordingly, or else there is the possibility of misdirection and misunderstanding. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Emphasizing the personal experience of the artwork as a consequence of interactivity is called into play in works such as Digitale (2003-2004). In this work the viewer utilizes a touch-screen that is embedded into a bench to manipulate, capture, and transform images that are simultaneously projected onto the wall by way of a modified Brownie camera. The viewer is accorded the privileged position of determining what they see and when, but in doing so must also adopt the vulnerable position of being observed and recorded. Castonguay's recent work entitled Elements (2004-2005)--on display as a solo exhibition at the Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal--is a seven-channel interactive installation produced in collaboration with programmer Mathieu Bouchard. Expanding upon the artist's ongoing preoccupations with technology's place as both marker and frame in our social environment and communication, Elements invites the visitor to explore seven interrelated projection devices arranged on the floor of the gallery space. Each device in Elements is rigged with new accoutrements so that it can operate as part of an experiential concert with the other devices in the room. Using an array of additional lenses and new technological components, the projectors receive and direct images onto circular fields on the wall, thereby diffusing what they see. …

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