I recently collaborated with RISD Digital + Media graduate student James Franco on the promotion of his fresh, young, sexually depraved Kickstarter Project: The Museum of Non Visible Art…
After spending a few weeks smoking crystal meth in Las Vegas I dove into Ms. Franco stripping for change at a shady Reno strip club. My heart fluttered as she wrapped her cellulose-filled thighs around my semen-crusted jowls. The next morning, while lying on the blood-tinged rug of my 98 Ford Taurus we debated our usual ploys: 911 conspiracy theories, abortion rights for clothes hangers and the ever-prevalent need for a more fascist regime.
Methamphetamine smoke burned my lungs as the flash of the lighter reflected off the glass tube and illuminated Franco’s blood shot eyes.
F: Let’s run away L. I be so sick of turnin’ triks fur short change and the brused uturus from my pimp, Gantner.
L: (Pausing, L reaches for the bottle of mouth wash he’d been drinkin’ and smashes it across F’s head) Fuck. You. I need to drag around a whore like I need female castration. If you ain’t bringin’ in monies ur useless to me. (Faux-dramatic pause) I mean, I love you?
F: (F blushes, only to realize it was a momentary Myocardial Infarction from weeks of unrest and drug abuse) It don’t make two much sense but what if we make a controversy from nothin’? If we prefabricate and create an argument to an idea then launch the actual idea into the media under the guise of the premeditated controversy the public might pay attention to the idea through the pre-man-made debate. It don’t even matter what the idea be, we could even sell ideas.
L: Who would buy the screaming voice of an emotionally abused 9-year-old boy? Your ideas are about as valuable as AIDS.
F: (Still numb from the residual heroin) Oh you sweet talker. Do you see my point L? We can make people care about bad ideas simply by creating a controversy around them, weather real or fake. The true piece is making anyone care about an idea through the distortion of facts. The only thing that matters is media and the public’s attention. That be how we make monie.
L: So where do we get our ideas? They ain’t free.
F: Can use ideas from the Googles? It be no thought crime if we don’t tell nobody.
L: (Struggling to think through his blurry cognition) Aw F this ain’t ever gonna work. He’s watching.
F: It sure will L! I bet the last piece of collagen in my pussy that it wull! I saw on TV that sumone sold an idea at one of them made up online museums. This has been happening already! I remember reading a moving picture book about how ideas happen in correlation to other, similar ideas. Like the light bulb or Einstein’s theory of relativity. It takes layers of information and thought to occur before true innovation can happen. These ideas all happen at the same time due to advances in technology, just like the creation of new street drugs. The time to explore selling ideas through digital infrastructures is now.
(Blue and Red lights flash in the background as sirens can be heard in the distance)
L: RUN! The Pigs!
That was the last time I saw the lovely Ms. Franco. However through our drug-induced conversations we became intertwined in the reverse-engineering of public controversies through world wide web. Because I couldn’t reach Ms. Franco in person (She got famous in those moving pictures after her sex change) our relationship continued through the reverse engineering of online controversy. And that is how I loved, lost and contracted syphilis from Mr. James Franco.
To be continued…
Why am I not surprised?
Hans Christian Anderson is the first reference to this idea with the emperor’s new clothes that I know. Unless you have some real evidence that Praxis copied your friends, rather than had a parallel, and hardly unique, idea, calling people plagiarists just makes you look silly.