THE COSMOS ON A CHIP

摘要

For Italian artist Leonardo Ulian, this is our universe. At its center:amicrochip. Beyond: resistors, capacitors, inductors, transistors. Ulian's "technological mandalas"-webs of circuitry in the form of the Hindu or Buddhist symbolic diagrams of the cosmos-are icons for an electronic age, and he'll be exhibiting them this fall in Milan. Each mandala, the biggest of which is nearly 5 feet across, takes two weeks to create and requires as many as a thousand parts (mostly purchased from Russian sellers on eBay). They're meant to trigger deeper questions about our relationship with technology. "People nowadays almost worship electronics," he says. "I wouldn't be surprised to hear that someone has created a religion based on microchips." Chant with us: ohm.