The United Nations International Year of Glass 2022 'Fired up!' Exhibition

Project Silica  

When you stop to think about how much information is already stored in the cloud, let alone how quickly that capacity will need to dramatically expand in the very near future, it is hardly surprising that data storage developers are now talking about zettabytes taking over from where terabytes left off!

All of this is only possible because highly specialised lasers, used in conjunction with quartz glass, can now store up to 500 terabytes on a piece of glass no bigger than a CD! All of the work currently being undertaken in this field is wrapped up under the heading Project Silica. What makes this technology unique is that quartz glass can use five dimensions, so that every ‘spot’ on the glass can store three different bits of information. An ordinary CD only has two dimensions in which to store data. What is truly extraordinary about this technology is the claim that it can store data for up to a million years - pivotal in the future for national archives, museums, private organisations or libraries.  So, I have attempted to reflect on all that in my artwork and I have used my favourite medium of glass as a starting point. I then took a photograph of the light reflected off the back of a CD and manipulated that image using digital software on my cell phone. I printed the resulting image onto laminated vinyl which I selectively layered between five sheets of varying thicknesses of glass; all strategically held together using crystal clear glue.