sticking point is a data visualisation project built in php and openframeworks and comes in two parts.

The larger print of the two prints draws on constitutional documents which include not only constitutions themselves but such documents as revolutionary manifestos, bills of rights, peace treaties etc. The Office For the High Commission of Human Rights at the United Nations defines a number of key themes or areas of human rights which are delineated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - a document conceived shortly after the Second World War. In the print, the context of those words is traced through history through around two hundred documents in English translation.

Participants use a sliding library ladder to view the higher parts of the print

Each year has a colour code so it is possible to trace follow the references to different themes in the same year through different documents. The curves join together documents from the same country.

The smaller print is a visualisation of distinct words in the sections of 75 world constitutions which pertain to fundamental rights, freedoms duties and obligations of citizens.

Each circle represents a single country. The words are arranged around a circle and are in order of significance. This significance is judged by how often each word occurs in this country's constitution in comparison to other countries' constitutions. The lines and circles together form a graph of that significance. Finally the curves link together words which appear in more than one constitution.