Sandra Day O’Connor Interview

Sandra Day O’Connor was the first woman to serve as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court beginning in 1981 and continuing for the next twenty-five years. Justice O’Connor sat with me for an hour long interview and portrait in 2011 for, The Network (2012), an expansive eighty-nine subject generative video artwork, focused on interviewing and giving a platform to people searching for and creating solutions around difficult national and international issues. Justice O’Connor’s interview was filmed on the stage of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery @smithsoniannpg. Our conversation ranged from the personal to the political during the time we sat together.

Nominated by President Reagan to fulfill campaign promises to place a woman on the Supreme Court if given the chance, O’Connor was at first reluctant to accept the nomination but felt compelled to serve her country at the urging of her husband John and her colleagues in Arizona. Following her time on the Supreme Court, where she oversaw decisions in numerous landmark cases, O’Connor turned her attention to the importance of civics education in the public schools of America through programs like @icivicsinc.

The Network is an ever evolving generative portrait of Washington DC beginning in 2011 and ending in 2012. This artwork uses a database and custom software designed in studio to create a non-linear artwork that uses algorithms to connect and create constantly shifting relationships between political leaders, public figures and those adjacent to these worlds via a vast body of interviews.

Each interview was edited and tagged with subject matter and other pertinent information. This information is in turn used to create a map for the artwork, which uses a series of computational strategies to generate a new narrative structure each time the artwork is turned on. The Network (2012) reveals surprising connections between political parties, movements and ideologies through technology.

Learn more about The Network here.