BOSTON (AP) — When Jim Sanborn was commissioned to create a sculpture at CIA headquarters, he wanted to do something that to spoke to its world of spies and secret codes.

The result was a 10-foot-tall, S-shaped copper screen called “Kryptos” that resembles a piece of paper coming out of a fax machine. One side features a series of staggered alphabets that are key for decoding the four encrypted messages on the other side. The paragraphs, he said, were “designed to unravel like a ball of string” or “nesting Russian dolls” and get increasingly difficult.

“At the time, codes and encoding was an esoteric subject,” Sanborn said. “I wanted it to be less so, and I wanted it to be fun. … Any artist’s goal when they make an artwork is to have the viewer’s attention for as long as possible.”

Sanb

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