Bean Counter

A short video, with the aesthetics of circa-1980's IBM television commercial, describes the Bean Counter in a concise business tone appropriate to the project:

A robotic printing calculator keeps track of the death toll in Iraq in terms that it understands.
American soldiers are "valued" at their death's cost to their government, a $100,000 "death benefit"
Non-US forces and Iraqi civilian deaths each contribute $0.00 to the total
A cold and inhuman method for calculating moral responsibility through accounts payable.

Technical Summary

The calculator checks Internet sources for reports of deaths in Iraq. When an incident is reported, it begins the printing process by clicking an alert. It then clicks each key in turn as it adds the values for each of the reported victims. It subtotals, feeds the paper and waits for another report to appear.

Hidden under the calculator is a printed circuit board containing a custom circuit that electronically mimics the pressing of keys. It receives its commands from a serial link to a linux server hidden inside the pedestal. This server also acts as a relational database server, storing a history of all the death reports that it has retrieved since the start of the war. This computer also provides a public web server where anyone can see the current state of the calculator, including its current subtotal, and a private web server that allows a gallery attendant to maintain the installation through a web browser.

Links

• My blog post describing how I control the printing calculator
• My blog post about the Linux server hidden inside the pedestal