“There’s Someone at the Door, He Says He’s From the Future.” so begins a conceptual art piece with shades of john titor, neurocam, and that michael douglas movie the game. the artists began tracking the internet activities of a random 18-year old computer gamer named kolin (or velocity gnome as he was known online). they monitored and recorded his AOL instant messages and gather information about his friends and family from other sources on the net. blending this data with scenarios from video games and sci-fi films, they developed a mythology in which Kolin is “singled out as the savior of the human race.” they deliver a 40 page scrapbook to his home that incorporates photographs of him and excerpts from his personal correspondence. one of the artists shows up on Kolin’s doorstep, introduces himself as his “mentor from the future,” presents him with the book, and leaves without further explanation.

from the artists’ statement: “The plot thickened several days later with Kolin posted a detailed description of the encounter to an on-line gaming forum, along with digital photos of every page in the book. Members of the forum quickly added their own theories and responses, which ranged from close readings of the text and speculations about the gender of its authors, to admissions of jealousy and accusations that Kolin had invented the story in order to get a high rating for his thread (which in a few weeks had received over 40,000 hits).

a year passed after this initial contact. In August 2004, the artists mailed Kolin a package containing a photograph of their meeting a year earlier, along with a note, a certificate, and a plane ticket to Minneapolis. Kolin was met at the airport by a man in a beat up Lincoln Town Car who identified himself as “The Gatekeeper.” For two days, Kolin was lead around the city in search of robots, buried treasure and information needed to save the future. the artists involved numerous actors and another on-line gamer (known as shags) who, equally baffled, was driven with Kolin to a forest and abandoned there. At some point, Kolin noticed that his new friend had mysteriously disappeared. “I stood there alone in the woods, in Minnesota, with a shovel and a large black locked box, more confused then I have ever been in my life.” Kolin survived the trip and posted a detailed account of his adventure, concluding, “it was a great experience, and I would not hesitate to save the future again, if the chance ever arose.”

you can read the account posted by kolin himself, as mentioned above, called how i saved the world from armegeddon. it includes many relevant images including those from the scrapbook and other materials the artists gave him.

i won’t bother with the tedious “is it art?” rigamarole. it’s a pointless and time destroying line of questioning. i for one think think of hoaxes as a kind of art. i love them when they are not perpetrated by all powerful governments. they rule. i do think it may as well be mentioned, however, that the artists aren’t artists at all in the classic sense. their names are dylan reiff and joe korsmo, both students; one is studying to be an actor / playwright, the other is studying business / marketing. so if that’s the case what exactly makes this anything other than a geeky prank? it has been included in an art exhibit of course! hence my referring to these fellers as “the artists” throughout. anyhow…

i think it’s amusing. and (you knew it was coming) that’s exactly what bugs me about it. it’s a fun idea, but i think it would have been even better if it were less amusing. mainly i’m speaking of the package our actor and marketing friends used to ignite the whole project. have you looked at it? this is always a sticking point for my terminally serious sense of aesthetics: quality. wouldn’t it have been more intriguing, more mysterious, more interesting, mo’ better, if this package and booklet were an impeccably designed artifact rather than some scrapbook done with elmer’s glue and marker? it looks like a 10 year old girl’s diary. they took the time too track velocity gnome’s online actions, to come up with a story, to enlist actors and drive the guy around minnesota, why not take the time to make the accompanying materials look like something from the future? would that be “too obvious?”

(side-note: to all, postmodern, ironic, art assholes of the world, let me say something right here and now, sometimes the obvious thing is the right thing, the clear thing, the authentic thing. jesus cripes!)

all in all i dig this project, would like to see more about it, though i will say they either did a full psychological work up on their “victim” or they got real lucky that he decided to post the whole thing online. would be much less interesting without his take on it. also, why just end it by abandoning the kid in the woods? got david lynch disease or what?