A Recent History of Writing and Drawing by Jurg Lehni and Alex Rich

Varoom, Issue 7

The title of this show suggests images of turning cogs and machines churning out reams of text. In contrast, the exhibition space seemed almost abandoned – the room dotted with four pieces of equipment, transforming the gallery into a simple workshop.

Design historian Emily king curated the exhibition containing works by designers Jurg Lehni and Alex Rich. Churning away at the back of the room is Dots on Demand, an interactive exhibit where you type a word or short phrase into the computer. These words are then punched out from an accompanying printer in a simple hole-cut typeface allowing each visitor to take home their custom-made cut-out poster.

The tiny, single-line printers of the second work, News On Demand, produce pre-loaded phrases from the day’s news when scanned across a sheet of paper. It also prints on skin as the two children opposite me soon found out, using it to tattoo their arms and legs with the phrase ‘There’s water on Mars. I’ve tasted it’.

Next is Flood Fill, a series of mesmerising monitors displaying constantly changing black and white patterns like a 1980s computer game. The final exhibit, Viktor, silently hibernates in the corner for the majority of the time, coming to life for only a few hours each week as the exhibition’s cabaret show.

Its creator Lehni modestly calls Viktor ‘a work in progress which I have to tweak weekly.’ Created from a mix of four motors, wire and technologies that have been adapted to reproduce writing and drawings, Viktor is the star of the show. Once activated he dances a piece of chalk over the gallery wall, covering a big surface area with a reproduction of the information that has been programmed into him.

The sessions, billed by the ICA as ‘Live performances by Viktor and special guests’, took place every Thursday night, and on the evening I returned to see it in action, the exhibition space was already teaming with visitors waiting for a talk by a tall, bespectacled industrial designer called Konstantin Grcic. While looking at the 50 or so of us settled on the concrete floor in front of him, Grcic fiddled with his microphone and said indignantly: ‘O-level woodwork. Somebody said that about my work once. They called it O-level wood-work!’
Grcic had produced a drawing prior to his talk, which had been programmed into Viktor and was appearing in chalk on the gallery wall while he spoke.

Seeing Viktor at work was a delight: from slow subtle actions to a sudden movement when the taught wires pulled the chalk from one corner of the wall to the next like a huge etch a sketch, it was exhilarating to see him in action. Grcic seemed equally impressed, turning around to watch his drawing appearing on a ground scale while talking about his work: ‘It is a cartoon character of an old gentleman dressed in a cap and overcoat. He is my alter ego,’ he explained.

The animated drawing was mapped out by Viktor in scenes, telling the story of the picture – from an image of the old gentleman alone, to the gentleman with a microphone, to the gentleman with a thought bubble, and so on. This sense of momentum, together with Viktor’s ability to produce accurately the text on a tyre and the curly microphone lead, made it a spectacle to watch, and it became hard to listen to Grcic at the same time.

A booklet accompanying the exhibition features an introduction by Emily King, revealing the relationship between the two designers (Rich was a member of the degree team who judged Lehni’s degree), and a detailed history of the technology on show, both of which adds valuable context to the exhibition.

A Recent History of Writing: Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London. July 9 – August 31, 2008.