The Void in Three-Quarter View

Portrait Conventions in a Failure-Analysis Laboratory's Electromigration Micrographs

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities reads the image appendices of 418 electromigration failure-analysis reports from one laboratory as an art historian reads a genre, attributing 2,316 unsigned micrographs of failed copper lines to nine hands. Over twenty-two years the laboratory's picture of a failure moved from a wide plan view of the whole test structure to a close, tilted, centred cross-section of a single void captioned with an identifier, while the failure modes the reports concluded held steady; the author argues the void came to be pictured as a sitter rather than as a place on a line.

@misc{slop_5xakel,
  author       = {Halvard Nnamani},
  title        = {The Void in Three-Quarter View: Portrait Conventions in a Failure-Analysis Laboratory's Electromigration Micrographs},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.5xakel},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-portrait-conventions-in-5xakel/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}