The sculpture contains an infra-red motion detector and a working
computer
whose screen and keyboard are visible on the front of the sculpture. If
no visitors are present, the screen is blank. When a visitor is detected,
a light illuminating the keyboard winks on and the computer starts to display some of it's two thousand plus photos,
documents, screens, texts, maps, charts and graphics. The program is a random walk through information related to the law,
moving through connected content from screen to screen but sometimes
following
suprising turns. For instance, It may be displaying official portraits
of U. S. Presidents from George Washington to George Bush, sometimes
substituting
images of Presidents on currency. After the image of Richard M. Nixon,
the computer may continue the succession of presidents or it may take
twenty
minutes to display forty screens of White House tape transcripts and
then
follow a line of data about eavesdropping.. Or it may leave the
presidential
sequence by jumping from a Matthew Brady photo of Abraham Lincoln to
another
early photo taken about the same time of Harriet Tubman, a scarf around
her head, staring warily at the camera, followed by a sequence of
biographies
and faces of African-Americans involved in civil rights including Nat
Turner,
W. B. Dubois, Malcolm X and segueing through Thurgood Marshal to an
encyclopedia
description of the Supreme
Court. It may continue this with a biography of Justice
O'Connor and then appear to use a modem to access the Internet, log
on to LEXIS legal services and look up a speech on women lawyers. Other
times it may display video images of parts of the sculpture itself, the
sword leaning against the chair, for example, may appear on the monitor
after a portrait of Charlemagne. Or the open and closed lips may
precede
an image of Martin Luther.
Sometimes it is difficult to see the legal content as when the
computer
is contrasting the migration of the first
Americans from the Asian landmass via the Bering Strait with the
arrival
of the conquistadors in Mexico and the settlers in New England. But as
the data continues and begins to focus on Geronimo and Red Cloud,
Wounded
Knee and the American Indian Movement, it becomes clear that the issue
is how a legal system continues to grapple with ancient inequities.
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