Robert P. Taylor's JuryDuty: reflections on a trial 

Jury Duty 1997 - Main Page

The first version of Jury Duty was made accessible on 18 October 1997. Taking advantage of better image scanning and editing and reformating to take advantage of the image improvement, this second version was made accessible on 10 December 2001. It exhibits 46 digitized images to create an alternative record of a particular period of jury duty service in Manhattan (New York County), in June of 1997. All images were digitized from drawings of the people seen in the actual trial, elsewhere in the court building, or in transit to or from the court, by the site's creator, during his participation in citizen-required New York County Jury Duty, in June of 1997. The case involved domestic violence and apart from the incident in question, the saddest aspect of the trial was its indirect revelation of the proportion of New York City violent crime that is domestic.

As the Overall Index below shows, this site is organized around functional groups in which the participants found themselves: the pool of prospective jurors, the trial jurors, the trial witnesses, and so forth. Each such group is represented by its own group exhibit, displaying thumbnail images of those of its members who were drawn. Such exhibits visually summarize who participated in that group and provide links to individual pages presenting larger-scale images of, and information about, the members depicted.

The concept of using sketched images to create an alternative record of human events and encounters originated in my work with Praha, as a compliment to published proceedings, photos, and other traditional records of an international conference in Prague in May 1997 (see Related Taylor websites, below). Since that site and the initial version of Jury Dutyappeared, this concept has been elaborated and explored in a number of other websites, each focused on a different meeting or event (again, see Related Taylor websites). In creating such sites, however, another concept emerged and been repeatedly explored in a number of sites, a concept I have labeled the statistical view of the art of representation (see Statistical art below). Visitor comments are welcome and can be communcated through Comments below.