Colorful Circuit Cities Built From Motherboards, Processors, and Microchips

Save this story Save Save this story Save The trippy circuit boards in Heiko Hellwig’s Silicon Cities look like aerial views of futuristic urban clusters lit up at night. Electrical pathways weave like streets past skyscrapers formed from transistors and diodes, bathed in a candy-colored LED glow. “If you’re flying a drone over New York or LA, you might get similar views,” Hellwig says. Related Stories Photo of the Week Taking to the Sky to End Open-Water Salmon Farms Ahalya Srikant Photo Gallery ‘Fire Flowers’ Dazzle in Japan’s Fireworks Shows Laura Mallonee Photo Gallery Small-Town America Through the Lens of an Immigrant Michael Hardy Hellwig built these cityscapes last year using the guts of old MacBooks , IBMs , and even PlayStations that he scavenged from eBay and friends’ basements. In his studio in Stuttgart, Germany, he took apart the dull gray and black boxes, revealing the vibrant motherboards, processors, and microchips hiding inside. He photographed the most intricate parts on a table in his studio while teetering on a ladder above, a tall tripod holding his Nikon D850 in position. A pair of Profoto lights—sometimes covered in red or green filters—threw the circuitry into relief, simulating the sunlight and shadows of a real city. For each composition, Hellwig spent up to five hours stitching and layering anywhere from three to 10 circuit boards together in Photoshop. He also kicked up the colors here and there, creating the neon shades of yellow, orange, and purple you might find illuminating a lively night street. For Hellwig, the colorful circuit boards represent the bright, utopian future that computer makers promise their tech will bring about. But they’re also a bit menacing, satirizing a dystopian world where machines have taken over, and cities really are made up entirely of silicon chips. More Great WIRED Stories This nonsensical 3-wheeler might be the future of driving How to free up space on your iPhone The complexity of simply searching for medical advice PHOTO ESSAY: ‘Fire flowers’ dazzle in Japan Inside the crypto world’s biggest scandal Looking for more? Sign up for our daily newsletter and never miss our latest and greatest stories Most Popular Health and Fitness The Best Running Underwear to Beat Burn on Your Bits By Kieran Alger Gear How to Use Parental Controls in Your Google, Apple, and Microsoft Accounts By David Nield Phones How to Use Apple’s Genmoji to Create New Kinds of Emojis By Brenda Stolyar