Jim Sanborn

Covert Obsolescence: The Code Room, 1993 

Copper, text, projected light and petrified tree

 18'x20'x50'

I realized that much of the work I am drawn to and have covered in this blog have common themes, so In an effort to broaden my horizons I decided to look at the work of Jim Sanborn. I''ll admit that his Code Room installation grabbed my attention due to the light and shadow aspect, but when I did further reading on his body of works I realized the strong scientific themes and thought he would be a good addition.

Jim has a whole series of work relating to codes and his art is displayed in some prominent government buildings such as the CIA building in Langley, VA. Kryptos, commissioned in 1990, has made Jim some what of a superstar in the code breaking community for creating a code that has yet to be cracked.

 Terrestrial Physics, 2010
 Mixed materials, original parts, artifacts and video

18'x30'x50'

Another work Terrestrial Physics deals with the splitting of the Uranium atom. Jim recreated a working model of a particle accelerator. He had help from a NASA scientist and spent three years building it, making much of the machine by hand. Why? Well, there is a lot of beauty in science and even in the equipment used, but ultimately this piece is about the beauty of the moment of discovery. It was important to Jim that the moment be real. Somehow spending all the time and effort to recreate a working machine pays homage to the work that went into the initial discovery.

Kryptos, 1989
 Granite, quartz, lodestone, copper, encoded text, water
 12'x20'x10'

There is, with out question a stirring beauty in logic. So much of art that speaks to me has to do with nature, but science and logic are nature. I'm glad that there are artists like Jim Sanborn who explore the mind, thought, and science in the way they do.  

"When I accepted the (Kryptos) commission, I had something of an epiphany in the research I did about the agency, actually the science of espionage. I realized there is a connection between the sciences and the invisible forces of man." 
James Sanborn