Viktor, 2008, Jürg Lehni

DC motors, tool head, sprung steel coils, cables, custom made controller, Scriptographer software
Produced with Defekt GmbH, with support of Swiss Federal Office of Culture and Migros

The video shows Viktor illustrating the lecture «5000 Years of Chairs» by Michael Marriott about the development of the world through advances in chair making technologies spanning five thousand years. The talk was hold on the occasion of the exhibition «A Recent History of Writing & Drawing» by Jürg Lehni & Alex Rich, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 2008.

Before Viktor there was Hektor, a relatively simple spray-can output device driven by two motors. Invented in collaboration with the engineer Uli Franke, it made its debut as Jürg Lehni’s art-school graduation project at the Ecole Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne (ECAL) in 2002 and has performed regularly ever since.

Far from being a closed mechanical device – a black box between creative impulse and output – the concern of Hektor (and now Viktor) is the nuanced interaction between the user and the technologies of communication. The drawing machine Viktor is an amalgam of digital and mechanical technologies. A collage of tools, all of which were invented for other general and specific uses.