Sanborn: Home     Public Works    Gallery Installations    Complete List of All Works   Exhibitions   Awards

Sanborn Artwork at IRS Computing Facility

Location: Central Computing Facility, Internal Revenue Services, Martinsburg. Route 9, Kearneysville, West Virginia

Date: 1999

Materials: Granite, lodestone, copper

Size: 

    Paving element: 16' x 16'
    Seating element: 10'd x 18"h
    Lodestone element: 20'd x 4'h

Concept:

The function of the IRS Central Computing Facility is to compute and store the returns of U.S. taxpayers.  In response to this, the plaza ensemble consists of the following three elements:

• Binary Paving - This 16' x 16' piece is a representation of a 256-bit computer chip.  The binary "text" comprised of 0's and 1's sandblasted into the surface of each "bit" will eventually be deciphered by the employees at the IRS.
  


• Social Security Seating - This element is a representation of a magnetic storage disk with actual Social Security numbers forming the "tracs."  The personal identity of these numbers will remain unknown.
  


• Binary Tape Converter - This element represents a magnetic tape pick-up head converting names into binary code.  On the left, the "tape" lists the last of the Presidents and the Secretaries of Treasury.  As the tape passes through the 11-ton lodestone "head" the names are converted to binary information.
      

• More information from GSA brochure: here
• Aerial photo of area: here
• Topozone map
• PDF describing the facility
• >Mapquest aerial photo of the under-construction building

(Note from the webmistress: Astute observers may notice that the 1s in the bottom image are backwards.  Upon re-examining the source material, it was verified that the image has been reproduced correctly.  Or in other words, they're backwards in the book, too!  Since I don't know yet whether the book is in error, or whether the 1s are really backwards on the plaza, I am leaving the image as-is, until we can get a cross-check from another source.)

Return to Jim Sanborn webpage