Description

Power Book presents an interactive work made using a now-obsolete program called Adobe Flash. The user interacts with the work using a mouse. A laptop computer is installed in an unfinished wooded case. An opening is cut for the screen of the laptop and a flat shelf provides a surface for the computer mouse.

Two interactive animations are available. In one, entitled Turn Over A New Leaf/Tourner la page, a tree in the form of the letter “T” appears on the screen with a cloud of letters around its top. As the viewer moves the cursor across the screen the letters activate voices saying different idiomatic expressions in French and English related to trees, for example: On est pas sorti du bois; You can’t see the forest for the trees; Tire toi une buche.

In the other interactive animation, L’Orme, users are given a white screen. As they move the cursor it activates a grid of images that show fragments of the artist’s weaving The Elm Tree. The cursor movement “lights up” momentarily the square they pass over. The voice of the artist can be heard telling a story she wrote for the piece in French. She went for a bike ride looking to find an elm tree. When she found an impressive one, she stopped to admire it. An old guy came by and said “C’est un orme, il n’y a rien là! (That’s an elm, there’s nothing there!).


Statement

Power Book is related to a series of artist books in the exhibition Toucher du bois Touch Wood. In this case the “book” presents two interactive digital animations. Turn Over A New Leaf/Tourner la page is a playful look at expressions about trees in both French and English. Both languages are filled with vestiges of the tree’s connection to books. L’Orme is a fable about how the significance of something can be so different between people.



Exhibition History

September 9 – October 7, 2000
Galerie B-312, Montréal, Québec, Canada
Description

In the gallery’s small room, Karen Trask offers us a series of artist’s books where a reflection on the materiality of the object and our relationship to it is developed. The language and the image are found there, but the material qualities of the supports draw and hold our attention to what gives substance to these representations. Curiously, words and images acquire an increased virtuality.

Starting from the book, this work, in its astonishing simplicity, takes us back to its vegetal origin and introduces the tree as a motif. But this tree, even if it is materially present in different forms, is also crossed by language. Conversely, language, although strongly inscribed in the material, retains all its evocative power.
Objects come to us in different appearances and imply different relationships. They are sometimes sculptures to look at and involve displacement, sometimes books to leaf through, to manipulate, to read, sometimes virtual books. This means that they summon us differently, that they do not engage our bodies in the same way. At the heart of the experience to which we are invited, there is a diversity in which our senses are engaged in multiple ways, making us experience our presence through an extended range of sensitive qualities. (source: B-312 website, consulted July 12, 2023)

Dans la petite salle de la galerie, Karen Trask nous propose une série de livres d’artiste où se développe une réflexion sur la matérialité de l’objet et sur notre rapport à celui-ci. Le langage et l’image s’y retrouvent, mais les qualités matérielles des supports attirent et retiennent notre attention sur ce qui donne corps à ces représentations. Curieusement, les mots et les images en acquièrent une virtualité accrue.

À partir du livre, ce travail, dans son étonnante simplicité, nous ramène à l’origine végétale de celui-ci et introduit l’arbre comme motif. Mais cet arbre, même s’il est présent matériellement sous différentes formes, est aussi traversé par le langage. Inversement, le langage, bien que fortement inscrit dans le matériau, conserve tout son pouvoir d’évocation.

Les objets se présentent à nous sous différentes apparences et impliquent des rapports divers. Il sont tantôt sculptures à regarder et impliquent un déplacement, tantôt livres à feuilleter, à manipuler, à lire, tantôt livre virtuel. C’est donc dire qu’ils nous convoquent différemment, qu’ils n’engagent pas notre corps de la même manière. Au cœur de l’expérience à laquelle nous sommes conviés prend place cette diversité où sont engagés nos sens de multiples façons, nous faisant ainsi éprouver notre présence par un registre étendu de qualités sensibles. (source: site web du B-312, consulté le 12 juin, 2023)


Publications

Du statique au dynamique : Projets photographiques pour le Web
Sylvie Parent (2007). Ciel variable, (Issue 76), juin 2007, pp. 26-27.
Regards sur l’art Web au Québec: Quinze œuvres québécoises commentées et mises en perspective dans la courte histoire du Web
Sylvie Parent (2001). Magazine électronique du Centre International d’art contemporain de Montréal (CIAC), Volume 14, October 2001.