#heiko hellwig

Heiko Hellwig: Silicon Cities (2017)

Heiko Hellwig (German, b.1960)

Trigger series - photography - 2015

Heiko Hellwig

Silicon Cities

Silicon Cities captures the complexity and opaque character of digital machines. For Hellwig, the series represents at least two things: they refer to the bright utopian future of a fully technological world promised by computer manufacturers. On the other hand, they also reveal something abysmal, revealing the core of our digitalized society. This is controlled by information that we can no longer grasp and whose sources and paths we can no longer understand.

Hellwig composes the supposed cityscapes from the bowels of disused computers and game consoles, collecting motherboards, processors, and microchips. In his studio, he photographed the complex technical architectures with precise illumination.

Processors do not simply reveal the information they host and transport, they hide it in their digital architecture. Several photographs were layered on top of each other, adding yellow, orange, and purple neon shades.

They appear as satellite images looking down from above on the chaos of megacities, a futuristic scenario of light points and neon paths at night.

Hellwig represens today's cities for what they are: partly real and partly overlaid by the more imaginary structures that the Internet age creates. "Silicon Cities" just invented somewhere in Silicon Valley and then moved into our minds as artificial paradises.