Why Vokter exists

My grandfather painted. To the world he was a minor artist — a few local exhibitions in Setesdal, work that sold for modest sums to people who mostly knew him. To me he was a great one.

When he died I inherited four of his paintings. On any market they are worth very little. I would not sell them for any amount of money.

At the time I was studying electrical engineering and living in a shared house with five other people in Oslo. It was not a good place for paintings. The heating worked when it felt like it. The front door stood open all summer. People I had never met came and went through the hallway where I had hung them, because where else was I going to put them.

So I went looking for something that would tell me whether the room was doing them harm. What I found was either a hygrometer that showed me a number if I happened to walk past it, or a monitoring system built for institutions and priced for institutions. Nothing in between.

It seemed strange that the technology to look after art properly existed, but only if you were a museum. I was halfway through a degree in exactly the kind of engineering that closes that gap — low-power radio, sensors, batteries measured in years rather than weeks. The parts had quietly become good enough and cheap enough that there was no longer any reason for the gap to exist.

So I built one. Then a better one.

Vokter is what that became. It follows the same method conservators use and the same European standard museums work to, running on a sensor the size of a coin for a few euros a month.

The paintings hang on a better wall now. I still get an alert when the room turns, and I still go and look.

NORPOD AS
org.nr 916 724 047
Gaustadalléen 21, 0349 Oslo, Norway
post@vokter.art