Mixed Media
double-sided, copper-coated, epoxy resin glass fabric laminate, electrical components, lead solder
106.5 x 106.5 (cm)
41.9 x 41.9 (inch)
The ROM (read-only memory) is a data storage medium, whose data content is permanently recorded in production. In 12 new works, Goldbach has hand-built Read Only Memory boards with technical means common from the 1950s to 1970s. These ROMs encode passages from canonical texts addressing ideas and approaches to a universal language or “Lingua Universalis”. Conceived in the seventeenth century as a universal and formal language to express mathematical, scienti c, and metaphysical concepts, it is widely seen as the conceptual precursor to digital communi- cation. Similarly, photography has been seen as a type of “Lingua Universalis”, interpreting objects of the world through apparatus in ‘words of light’.