MOS TECHNOLOGY 6502, 2024
Hand-cut rubylith
22 x 30 in.
MOS TECHNOLOGY 6502, 2024
2-layer screenprint
22 x 30 in.
Before the design and fabrication of integrated circuits became computer-aided, operators used to hand-cut rubylith to create masks for the separate layers. This ongoing project researches the field of digital and media archaeology, and this initial step is an attempt to understand obsolete microchips by ‘reversing’ their design back to their original, physical format.
This project additionally calls for the attention to the physical labor involved in technology manufacturing, then and now. The human aspect of making, in an industry so austere about efficiency and maximization, is all too overseen and overlooked. Here, the substrate and diffusion layer designs of the MOS Technology 6502 were laboriously hand-cut onto rubylith - an old-school screenprinting method that has also fallen into disuse.
Rubylith Orbit, 2024
Intaglio with open-bite (silkscreen resist)
25 x 2.5 in
When weaving out the rubylith masks, little bits of "debris" were left scattered everywhere. Taking these small parts and exposing them too on the silkscreen, I created a scroll-like visual language founded on the negative spaces of a microchip mask. The design was then screenprinted tonto a copper plate with a diluted, thin acrylic, giving a bubble-like texture and an offset shadow to their image.
This inadvertent mask layer calls upon ideas of waste in making and design. How much waste do we accumulate in our science and making? Where does it all go? In visual similarity to space junk, Rubylith Orbit flips to the scale to the microscopic world.
