Michèle Provost has installed an extraordinary and voluminous series of works on paper at Dale Smith Gallery called playlist. The show’s title is a reference to the lyrics and song titles that fill our consciousness through the increasingly ubiquitous iPod and similar musical technologies.

Many of the works are hand-drawn textual experiments, but the series of four comic book treatments took the playlist idea to a different kind of pop culture cross-reference. We present the four pieces here and dialogued with the artist about them.

In playlist song titles invade everything and show up everywhere ... is this a comment on how music is everywhere thanks to technology and implanted into our brains thanks to the mass media?

Most certainly. The lists of titles in this show can be read and appreciated in a great many ways, as poetry, as graphics, as a portrait of our society or a depiction of common human behaviour, but the recognition and association factor certainly keeps peeking through; we can all identify some of these songs as soundtracks to our lives, collectively or individually. Filmmakers have been on to this from the start. And so has commerce. New technology has taken it one step further by infusing these sounds and words almost directly into our brains on a constant basis, as our iPods follow our every moves on a daily basis. And playlists are the ultimate confirmation of this phenomenon, as they are designed by us to fit our various états d’âmes and activities.

The comics stood out for me as being somehow different from the rest of the show ... along with perhaps the album covers ... because you are taking a form of pop culture (comics) and infusing it with another, song titles. Why did you decide to include comic book treatments in the show?

I suppose that after months of concentrating on words, although I am positively tuned in to their graphic value, I somewhat craved images. In process, I was struck by how much our perception of words can be modified and dictated by way of association with image. The classic comics reproduced in this section of the show were purely selected for their ability to fit the number of song titles to be inserted in each case, and the general mood of the keyword. However, once inserted, the text acquires meaning completely separate from its association with the actual songs or our experience of them. In fact, that was part of the pleasure for me while developing these works; to sit back and watch the magic of random association produce little gems of wisdom, irony, humour and depth. I suspect that the crew of writers currently working on this material (for a performance entitled playback at the Mercury Lounge, March 5th) are currently experiencing the same thing.

I'm intrigued by what looks like the predominant use of pencil in the works. Is it pencil? Why choose this as opposed to paint or illustration markers?

As a spectator of visual arts, I have always admired works in graphite and the lushness of this material. The successive and extensive application of broad graphite, as used in this exhibition, implies a process more closely related to modelling than to actual drawing, which corresponds better to my particular skills and inclinations. Can’t paint. Don’t like markers.

The word playlist refers to digital media ... but the work itself seems organic, human, hand-drawn ... is this a purposeful contrast?

While the end result is certainly organic, human and hand-drawn, the process goes through very many stages, including and embracing the electronic. Most of these works are composed on a very small scale, either freehand writing, Photoshopping or rubberstamping. They are then scanned and modified in shape and size in order to be projected, traced by hand and then drawn. By the end of the process, all evidence of mechanical intervention has disappeared. That electronic–low-tech contrast does indeed very much appeal to me, and is explicitly expressed through the show by ample references to vinyl albums and 45s, although the subject matter exists purely in electronic form.

playlist will be on exhibit at Dale Smith Gallery until March 6.