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Gargoyle is one of my strongly primitive works. People have commented that it looks Egyptian, other say Hawaiian, yet others have mentioned Easter Island. This is a work where I had in mind a look and went searching for it. I was looking for strong lines and squared geometric shapes that suggested primitive gods and spirits. I was working on a concept that manifested our culture’s worship of technology. Actually, Silicon God was my working title. As I found the chip and section I wanted to work with, I tried a couple of different studies and this one struck me forcefully. The geometrics were right, but dark purple and blue hues suggested an eeriness that moved me in time to the Middle Ages. The name Gargoyle seemed to me as being just right, a certain ugliness that protects us from evil. Computers allow us to accomplish some really great things, but they also can be a significant source of frustration. Sometimes I wonder, just who serves whom.

This image is of the decoding logic of an Intel 1702 EPROM memory device. An EPROM (Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory) is easily identified because it is the only computer chip that requires a quartz window in its package. Memory on most chips is organized into a matrix. To access a bit, given its address, the appropriate row and column must be selected. This is the job of the decoding logic. EPROM’s were used when it was not possible, or desirable, to store programs or information on computers disks. The EPROM was useful to programmers in that it was erasable (by ultraviolet light) and reprogrammable in the field. The Intel 1702 was the first EPROM and was introduced in 1971.

Close-up Study 1

Close-up Study 2

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