"Slip a dollar into a slot in the "Waterboard Thrill Ride," and watch through bars as a man in a hooded sweatshirt pours water into the nose and mouth of another man in an orange jumpsuit convulsing against his restraints.

It looks like a scene from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But this is Coney Island, and the two men are motorized mannequins whose interaction takes place alongside freak shows and funnel cakes.

The scene is the creation of Steve Powers, who has participated in the Venice Biennale, won a Fulbright grant and published art books, but whose roots are in the graffiti art of the streets.

"I wanted to make the perfect Coney Island experience. Something that captivates, that's an immediate visceral reaction and that lingers in the memory," he said, speaking in front of his booth, which features an image of SpongeBob SquarePants saying, "It don't Gitmo better!"

"There's no better place than an amusement park to confront horror and things we're fearful of," he said later. "It's an investigation."

The investigation progressed Friday, when Powers and several lawyers subjected themselves to waterboarding at the hands of an experienced interrogator who was wearing a ski mask and combat boots.

In a private room at Coney Island, with an audience of artists, journalists, friends and family, former Army interrogator Mike Ritz roughly stuffed a towel into his victims' mouths, one by one, and poured water until they struggled.

One woman looked fragile and tiny, her feet kicking helplessly in platform shoes as water filled her eyes and nose.

"It was a terrifying experience," said Karin Kunstler Goldman, 64, an assistant New York state attorney general. "The fact that it took place near roller coasters and cotton candy sends an important message: We here can engage in frivolity and fun at a time when in our name this is happening to people somewhere else."

Ritz, who was hired to administer the technique, said: "The idea behind this is the person is sucking in a little bit of water and a lot of air so they feel like they're drowning. The real power of the interrogator is the fear of the unknown."

"It's sensationalist, right?" Ritz said. "But I think if you're for or against this technique, the conversation about this needs to start. We need to recognize what it truly is -- which is torture."

Powers doesn't express opinions either way and insists his art is not political. "We are reaching a group of people that don't know about the subject," he said.

Outside, when people took in the public display set up like other exhibits, some were clearly moved.

"This is hard to watch," said Zekri Youssef, 33, a pizza maker from Egypt. "People don't know this happens."

"I recognize this, because I was tortured, too," said Paul Rivera, 41, who says he was tied down with restraints while he was serving prison time for selling drugs and guns. "This is sad to see."

"That's messed up," said Joshua Sanchez, 16, a Bronx student. "That's real wrong to torture someone, and I wouldn't have put a dollar in if I knew."

"I don't think there's a need for that. I don't like it," said Denise Kennedy, 49, a Brooklyn homemaker who held up her 9-year-old niece to view the exhibit before realizing what it was. "It's not for kids at all."

"It's our chance to be silly and political and educational all at the same time," said Scott Baker, the "outside talker" for the freak show next door, speaking into the microphone, and then switching to his pitch for a growing crowd: "Perhaps you've heard of the Man Eating Chicken. Or Lobster Boy, who was not born with hands like you and me, but pinching claws. . . . He's the only magician to perform sleight of claw."

Coney Island is no stranger to political display. Its World in Wax museum once showed dioramas of current events -- opium den sagas, murders, presidential stories -- said Charles Denson, author of "Coney Island: Lost and Found."

During World War II, Coney Island had an exhibit of captured Nazi warplanes and used fireworks displays to depict the United States winning sensational battles, Denson said. Afterward, there was an exhibit of Hitler's escape car. Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, shooting games used targets of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, he said.

Powers said his idea was born when Coney Island USA invited him to make an installation in a concrete room that reminded him of an interrogation cell.

He first wanted real people to undergo waterboarding for the public, but he realized that might be tricky and limited it to the one-time private experiment. For the public display, with robotic stand-ins, Powers concerned himself with details such as finding music mentioned on blogs as having been played to prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

His work was commissioned by Creative Time, a public arts organization launching a national initiative called Democracy in America. Since the Waterboard Thrill Ride closed Friday at Coney Island, Creative Time is showing it at the Park Avenue Armory.

"Sometimes the absurd is a way to shock people out of their daily routine and get them to think about things in fresh ways or get them to pay attention," said Anne Pasternak, the president and artistic director of Creative Time. "That's our hope."" (Robin Shulman, The Washington Post, Aug. 17, 2008)