Workshop by Pascale Tétrault
February 8 ,15 and 22, 2025
@Eastern Bloc's Multifunction Room, 55 Rue de Louvain Ouest, #53
𝗗𝗘𝗦𝗖𝗥𝗜𝗣𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡
Given by Pascale Tétrault, this workshop brings together electronic art and poetry. It is ideal for anyone with an interest in both programming and writing poetry. Participants will familiarize themselves with Arduino and Processing to create an installation at the intersection of writing and electronic art. Using a microcontroller, they will learn to control a thermal printer, similar to those used on cash registers, to print texts. The integration of interfaces (buttons, potentiometers) will enable them to explore notions of interactivity and transform narratives in real time and space. This workshop aims to introduce participants to off-screen digital literature and to the hijacking of connected objects for artistic purposes.
This workshop will be in French (FR) and English (EN).
COURSE OUTLINE
DAY 1 :
Introduction to the Arduino world.
Reviewing circuit basics.
Connecting buttons, potentiometers and displays.
Appearance/disappearance of words on the Liquid Crystal Display.
DAY 2 :
Connecting the thermal printer.
Each person prints a short poem.
Connecting the button and potentiometer to interact with the poem.
Assembling printer and interface.
Introduction to Processing.
DAY 3 :
Processing activity (continued).
Final assembly (solidification of the final prototype).
Presentation in the space.
FACILITATOR'S BIOGRAPHY:
Pascale Tétrault
Pascale Tétrault is a multidisciplinary artist and poet based in Montreal, whose works operate at the frontier of writing and electronic art. In 2018, she completed undergraduate studies in communications, creative writing and interactive media, which inform her current practice. In spring 2024, she completed a Master's degree in Studio Arts at Concordia University, where, through the creation of machine sculptures, she explored issues relating to language, memory and technological craft. Since 2019 she has also been working as a creative technologist and programmer in the creation of interactive systems for and with several artists and designers, including Katherine Melançon, Marie-Andrée Pellerin, Anissa Boukili El Hassani and Ying Gao. Pascale has also been an educator for the past six years, offering courses in programming and digital creation at various artist-run centers and schools, including SAT, Eastern Bloc and AdaX. In 2023, alongside Selina Latour, she presented the collaborative project Soft Input at the Maison de Culture Pierre-Chartrand. Pascale's works become hybrid objects combining matter, poetry and electronics. Today, her practices as artist, collaborator, educator and technologist are inseparable and inform one another.
As part of her practice, Pascale develops dynamic, autonomous sculptures that serve as a medium for her poems. Themes of language, systems, ephemerality and technological craftsmanship are integral to her approach.
“My approach is at the frontier of electronic art and literature. I'm particularly interested in the materiality of text and the exploration of its off-book or off-screen forms. Using wood, microcontrollers, royalty-free tools, motors and fibers, I build dynamic, programmable sculptures to support my poems. Through their gestures, words and forms, my intimate-scale machines tell and show animated, tangible narratives in physical space.”
