June, 1997
                               Sculpture doubles as a brain teaser

                                      From wire reports

CHARLOTTE -- It's a riddle wrapped in a cylinder, and so far, no one at UNC Charlotte
seems to have unlocked it. The riddle is contained in a new sculpture, "The
Cyrillic Projector," an 8-foot-tall bronze cylinder that displays a secret code. 
                                    
Installed in April in the plaza between UNCC's Friday and Fretwell buildings, the
piece is perforated  with Cyrillic letters, the alphabet used in the Russian
language.  At night, a light inside reflects the coded Cyrillic message onto 
the walls of the two classroom  buildings. 
                               
But what's the message? That's the mystery.  "I've given Charlotte a puzzle," says
Jim Sanborn, the Washington artist who created the work. He also has provided enough
information to solve it.  Half the cylinder is a 16th-century decoding chart,
invented by a French diplomat. Viewers can use that chart to decode the other
half of the cylinder, which contains a coded text describing the danger of
suppressing intellectual and artistic freedom. One clue: The decoding chart
contains the Cyrillic word "TEHb"  (pronounced tyen). It's the Russian word for
shadow, and it's a key word that can be used to decipher the work. 
                      
How difficult is this puzzle?  "Not very," Sanborn says. Not nearly as difficult
as his first encoded sculpture -- a work called  "Kryptos" that he created for CIA
headquarters in Langley, Va., in 1987.  That code, created with the help of a
cryptographer, is so hard to break that the CIA "will never figure it out," he says. 
                                    
Sanborn built "The Cyrillic Projector"  in the early '90s. The work has been shown
twice -- at Florida's Orlando Museum of Fine Arts and at Washington's Corcoran
Gallery, in a show titled "Covert Obsolescence." 
                                  
When UNCC officials launched a national competition to find a sculpture to grace the
plaza between UNCC's Friday and Fret well buildings, they assumed an artist would
create a new piece for the location.  But Sanborn thought his "Cyrillic Projector"
would be perfect for the location, since the two buildings naturally serve as
screens for the projected letters. UNCC's selection panel agreed, choosing the piece
from among 88 entries.  "It was almost as though the setting had been
designed for the piece," says UNCC art department chairwoman Sally Kovach, who
served on the panel. "It interacts with the space in a way only really good art can." 
Panel members also thought the work's mystery and its message, about free expression,
were appropriate for a university. "It blends very nicely with an academic
environment, because it poses inquiry, and that's exactly what a university is
about," says UNCC art Professor Eric Anderson, who served on the selection committee.
And at night, when light projects the Cyrillic letters onto the buildings, the effect
is akin to sitting in a planetarium, Kovach says, where you're gazing at
"whole worlds laid out before you."
                                    
Along with "The Cyrillic Projector,"  Sanborn also created a second piece, called
"Adam Smith's Spinning Top."  It's next to the Friday building, which houses
the Belk College of Business Administration. The work includes text from
18th-century economic theorist Adam Smith, who chronicled the development of
capitalism as an economic system. UNCC paid a total of $50,000 for the two works.
The money had been set aside through a state program, now defunct, that earmarked
half of 1 percent of a building's construction for art works. 
   
So far, several faculty members say, they don't know anyone who's attempting to
decode "The Cyrillic Projector." But Bob Anderson, an associate professor of math,
predicts someone in his department eventually will tackle the code.  "It's
only been there on the order of a few weeks." Kovach, though, doesn't care whether
she learns the coded message.  "I don't think any of us are going to try to
decode it," she says. "We're just going to enjoy it. It's just a mystery and 
it's fun."