Interview with Mike P
Interview with MIKE PELLETIER about his first solo show in the Normalville Contemporary Art Centre for Contemporary Art
A: Welcome to this interview, we are now few days away from your grand opening which is very exciting, are you ready for it?
M: Yes - it’s one of the few times in my life that I’ve been actually prepared for the exhibition.
A: What can you tell us about this piece that you are about to show, and how does it relate to you other work - what is the name of the piece, to start off?
M: Oh that’s the only thing I wasn’t prepared for! We could say that it’s called : “Parametric drawings”. And it is a series of drawings that were made on a computer controlled drawing machine, a plotter. These are the machines that date back to the 60s, and were used for the architectural renderings. Instead of printing like a regular printer does, it actually draws on a piece of paper with a pen. With it, I’ve created a series of figural drawings. They come from the 3d animated characters that are then translated into these chaotic drawings - drawn with this plotting machine.
A: So in a way you are actually giving life, a new romantic life to something that is still materially nonexistent outside the screen. Are you are putting yourself in a God position by doing that?
M: I never really thought that way - haha - it’s not entirely untrue cause it’s kind of a long process; First I have to start with the animations which I’m also showing alongside these drawings. I’m showing the animation that becomes the source for the drawings and with these animations – who are these animated characters that are kind of like rag dolls in a way. They do have some basic physical properties and they crash and collide with each other and they kind of flop around
A: On screen?
M: Yes, so when you are creating these animations it is a bit like playing with dolls, but playing with these very realistic human figures, so yeah there can be some discomfort and awkwardness
A: But these creatures never existed outside the screen and this is your way of animating them in our physical world right?
M: Yeah that’s a way of sort of freezing them in time, and I’ve always had an interest in forms, before animation, because all of my work is really technical, but also grounded in art historical practices. I was very much interested in a way of tying this immaterial things on the screen to the physical things that exist in the world and so - drawing seemed like an interesting way to connect the two.
A: Does this machine that does the drawing, referenced by the choreography of a human hand - also has a name – I mean, is the machine also a character in your set up?
M: Not so much - I think the machine is a secondary thing in the process. It’s the results that are more important, but I guess because they come from a very mechanical source and they look weirdly hand drawn, and that implies a certain tension in between things that are made by machines and look very mechanical versus things that have references to being made by hand.
A: How are you going to display this particular interaction of these two in the gallery space?
M: It’s really sort of separated within space , it’s a 3 wall space - so when you enter the space straight ahead of you - is where the really large scale plotting drawings are, and there is a series of smaller ones, to the left - and to the right there is a large scale projection of the animation from which all of these drawings are sourced from.
A: ..and the machine?
M: The machine itself is not exhibited, its more about the results and not the tool.. although the process is very important in everything that I do, of course.
A: And so how does this work compare to your previous work?
M: Well, I guess this is the one of the first times that I’m really experimenting with something outside a very screen based thing, so works on paper is quite a new thing for me, but naturally, it comes out of my existing practice of animation and digital animation.
A: But have you ever been the artist with a pen, do you enjoy sketching yourself?
M: That's definitely how I started when I first went to art school many, many years ago. My intention was to do drawings and paintings but, absolutely- I shifted away from that although I always held that close to me..
A: So you still use your own hand sometimes? M: I would never show anybody the stuff that I have done with my own hand, no (Ahaha)
A : I’m just interested in tracing your main sources for the work, since its common that the sources of our inspiration are very much the same sources of our frustrations
M: Yeah that's - because I make digital work, people tend to think about it in a certain way and by trying to incorporate references to the past.. Because I think people have certain expectations of 3d animation and what it should be and what it should be used for and by bringing in references to the past I try to trace a longer lineage of where those things come from and where they might go outside of their sort of expected uses.
A: So what do you think your targeted audience is? Is it for the new kids like millennials?
M: I try to be as open as possible, i just hope that they're curious people. And I try to find different ways in for different people. So a lot of the animation work itself is quite bright and colorful and that tends to draw a certain type of audience but since it's also very strange and uncanny - that brings in a different audience as well so yeah, the age is, not so much important, just their their level of curiosity.
A: So can we talk more about these characters, is there a narrative between them, who are they basically?
M: They're really sort of these blank holders. They're designed so that they can turn into anything else and they could be used for anything else but I’m always interested in the way that they remain like these strangely formless or extremely strangely androgynous beings ..
A - so they can be anything?
M: They really can be anything and because they still have this very human looking thing to them people tend to project things on them. In the animation that characters interact and crash into each other and do a certain dance they do, so it’s a weird mixture , it goes somewhere in between fighting and some sort of erotic dance to like something where it's completely falling apart
A: Falling apart is the end of the crash or maybe resurrecting in a way? Does it imply a dystopic feeling, or a formation of a new world?
M: Yes, it's kind of a weird in between worlds .. It's always kind of intention in between multiple states it does feel like it can go … A: .. We never know?
M You can never really tell which direction it’s going to go and people's reaction to it could be quite different
A : But it's not meant to scare the little children ? M: No, although sometimes that happens!
A: Ultimately, what is the origin, the inspiration behind this show M: I don’t know A: Good, so it’s from the .. M : .. it’s from the subconscious.. from the part of myself that's always trying to figure things out .. it comes from a very sort of experimental process, it is through doing your work that you get the inspiration from..