These particular geometric icons, which he developed in the early 1980s in the midst of a global technology boom, became the basis of Halley's painting for the decades to come. Halley derived his language not just from the urban grid but from the gridded networks permeating all facets of the contemporary "media-controlled, post-industrial world." With this background, the "cells" could be seen as "images of confinement and as cellular units in the scientific sense," according to Calvin Tomkins. The "conduits"—the lines connect various "cells" and other geometric patterns in a given work—represent the supports of "underlying informational and structural components of contemporary society," Amy Brandt writes. "Halley wished to incite public awareness of the confining, underlying structures of industrialized society and commodity capitalism."