When you sell the same machines as your nearest competitor, and your machines’ total raison d’etre is to be functionally identical to those of the market leader, how do you differentiate those great slabs of steel that conceal the electronics? Comparex Informationssysteme GmbH has taken leaf out of the book of the marauders that for three decades have personalised every train on the New York subway and taken the graffiti approach – in its caption to the photograph showing Urs Furrer, an artist with an international reputation, applying what looks like graffiti to a large steel box, the company says that he is applying his individual approach to personalisation of a 9/920 processor on its Hannover stand: Urs Ferrer, says Comparex, has already designed several hardware systems in similar form for everyday use in the Sulzer company, a Comparex client in Winterthur, Switzerland; His vision of workaday things as objects deserving of artistic endeavour is an aesthetic aspiration intended not only to stimulate thoughtful appreciation, but also to encourage potential emulators, so go to it, kids, get going with those spray paint cans.
