THROUGH A MICROCHIP LIGHTLY:
THE EVOLUTION OF ART

Flipping through the "Geographica" section of the latest National Geographic I notice a headline that should catch any writer's eye: "Art for Art's Sake." But it's the second half of that same headline that gives me real pause. "Art for Art's Sake--on a Chip."
The article is only one paragraph long, explaining that Michael Davidson, a micro-photographer who takes pictures through high-powered microscopes, has discovered tiny etchings on the metal circuitry of microchips. According to Dan Zuras, one microchip designer, these etchings are apparently a way for the "artist" to "sign his work." But now these "signatures" had become art in themselves, photographed and displayed at Davidson's website, "Silicon Zoo."
Simulation is the future, so I decide it's time for a virtual trip to the "Silicon Zoo." Having no web address, I allow a search engine to do the virtual navigation for me, Metacrawling through a metamap of hundreds of thousands of possibilities to find our destination. Clicking on the first search result that contains the phrase "Silicon Zoo," I am taken directly to the Molecular Expression's website, which prompts me to follow one of two other links--"Virtual Microscopy" or "Silicon Zoo." Finding a fork in the information highway, I decide to take the scenic route.
Logging on to Molecular Expression's "Virtual Microscopy" web site, I adjust the virtual focus, virtual intensity, and virtual zoom as I stare down through my virtual microscope port.
I should be virtually amazed.
Through the circle on my screen conflicting colors meet and converge, polarized light revealing ancient patterns. Red-orange and royal blue lines bisect the lens in an unstable digital dance. Concentric half-circles of bright yellow and red overlap, the color of pomegranate oozing between the pattern's cracks. This is a quartz-filled dinosaur bone, the text on screen tells me, photographed through a high-powered microscope. The specific dinosaur species is not named, but tracing the curve of yellow toward the middle of the screen, I envision the armored plates of a stegosaurus. This is the product of millions of years of fossilization and one microphotographer's vision. A work of decomposition, biology, photographic and evolutionary history.
But is it art?
A visionary writer of historic consequence, Anton Chekhov, said: "There is nothing new in art except talent." People listened. Artists believed.
But Chekhov knew nothing of computers. Moving from Molecular Expressions' "Virtual Microscopy" to a site called "Silicon Zoo," I am introduced to the full range of a micro-art form, a variety only hinted at in the brief National Geographic article. I discover that these chip designers' etchings are far from repetitive, but that each chip contains an individualized icon, the artist's personal signature, and that these diverse micro-images range from hummingbirds to herds of buffalo, license plates to Lassie the Dog. Normally hidden and too small to be seen by the human eye, I feel that something has been preserved as these chip designers' etchings have now been uncovered, excavated from their motherboards, magnified, and displayed in a "Silicon Zoo." One of these chips, a Hewlett-Packard 64-bit combinational divider, is called "The Buffalo Chip." Five bison are outlined in white, luminous against a midnight blue background. The broad forehead and long hump of each bison's back seem exaggerated, their bodies ethereal, perhaps because I haven't seen any real bison since I was a child. But I know this species is not extinct. I click a button to go back to "Virtual Microscopy." The bison vanish, and I return to my vision of an imagined stegosaurus.
Staring at 45 microns of dinosaur bone, I feel a sense of nagging at these small wonders. If photographs taken through a microscope or even miniature icons on computer chips could be considered art, is this new micro-level craft a result of talent, or simply a by-product of technology? Was Chekhov wrong? Am I interpreting his dictum too literally? Or have the possibilities of art evolved in ways the dinosaurs eventually did not?
I disconnect from Molecular Expressions and log onto my university's online student newspaper. Quartz-filled dinosaur bones vanish, replaced by a headline on the Opinion page.
"Evolutionists tend to ignore valid facts," a sophomore in chemical engineering claims, using moon dust and missing fossils to support his assertion that the universe is a product of intelligent design.
I laugh, then decide to cling to the Chekhov I know, rejecting any further questions about the nature of art in the age of technology and reminding myself that I too am a stubborn Kansan.
Art may change, but I can refuse to evolve.