Kryptos Analysis

Kryptos is a sculpture outside of the New Headquarters Building of the CIA in Langley, Virginia. This sculpture has caused a lot of questions to be asked because it hold a very encrypted code that the CIA can’t even crack, only the artist knows that the message is. Not only does it hold an encrypted code on it but it is also a beautiful structure made up of varies different materials. I choose this as my topic because it not only is beautiful but it is also has a lot of social impact due to the secret code hidden within.
I chose Kryptos as my art piece because it fascinates me that there is a piece of art work in front of the CIA headquarters that even they don’t know what it says. In 1998 a CIA physicist had decrypted the first three panels but could not crack the fourth panel. I find it very interesting that even the smartest people in the world can’t decrypt this code. The artist has to this day only released two clues; one being 64th – 69th characters on the fourth panel that spells out Berlin, and the second clue is character 70-74 that spells out clock. The interesting part about those two words is that the
He has a bachelor degree of Arts from Randolph-Macon College and a master’s degree of fine arts from Pratt Institute. He is known for his work with American stone and related materials that have a sense of mystery. To build Kryptos he chose polished red granite, quartz, copper plate, lodestone, and petrified wood. While Sanborn was created Kryptos he did a lot of research into cryptography, he chose to interpret the subject in terms of how it was created through out the ages. In order to produce the code for Kryptos he enlisted the help of a retired CIA cryptographer, also he wrote the code with a prominent fiction writer (that will not be revealed until the code is deciphered). When James Sanborn finished the piece he said “They will be able to read what I wrote is a mystery