Marcel Duchamp said: there are "two important factors... two poles of the creation of art: the artist on the one hand, and on the other the spectator." (Duchamp, 1957) The artist, or in this case the artist / programmer / developer /database designer has to keep the spectator (audience) in mind, because "the role of the spectator is to determine the weight of the work on the esthetic scale." (Duchamp, 1957) It is the audience that will do the final critique. Anyone creating a painting, or a web site needs to consider this, and determine how best to get their message across to the audience.

The title of the piece is taken from a painting by Marcel Duchamp. In his Nude Descending a Staircase he captured continuous motion by use of overlapping figures. "Motion and nude alike occur only in the mind of the viewer." (Stafford, 2005) For my Nude Descending a Staircase, the nude is a plain text legal paper, and "descending the staircase" is the process of evolving this nude into a format that can inform, educate and entertain even non-legal scholars. A large portion of the original text and the information it provided will now occur only in the mind of my viewer. The goal is to provide more insight through the use of technology versus the use of legal arguments. Similar to Duchamp's overlapping figures to enhance the impact of motion on his audience the capstone uses various multimedia technologies to enhance the learning and informative capabilities of a legal paper.