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A Recent History of Writing and Drawing
Until Aug 31
This event has finished
ICA, The Mall, London, SW1Y 5AH
Rating:
By Helen Sumpter

Posted: Mon Aug 4
There’s a lot of potentially interesting ideas behind this show about how technology old and new can be adapted to create machines capable of producing text and images. And as the press blurb explains, curators Jürg Lehni and Alex Rich were also inspired by discussions on codes, maps, networks, diagrams, performance, games, anthropology and science. The show’s title again promises much but unfortunately very little of any of this has made it into the gallery. What has is a rather spare display of four exhibits offering varying degrees of simple interactivity and minimal engagement.

Three single-line inkjet printers (like barcode scanners), which visitors can swipe across a piece of paper, print a pre-loaded phrase from that day’s news; a computer hooked up to a printer will punch out your typed-in text in holes on a poster-sized sheet of paper; and a series of three monitors display shifting and soporific patterns of black-on-white lines, dots and dashes like antiquated screensavers.

The main draw (no pun intended), ‘Viktor’, is a mix of software and motors that when loaded up with a stick of chalk whirs around a huge blackboard recreating whatever imagery has been programmed into it. No doubt he’s mesmerising when in full flow but for six days out of seven Victor sits silent and motionless, only coming to life on Thursday evenings when co-opted by artists and designers in a series of presentations and talks. If the show’s themes are of interest, my advice would be to visit on a Thursday evening, or wait for the catalogue.