such, | had to get different parts of the song individually 
and then splice them together into a recording that gives 
the right vision. 


The chairs are modified to have straps for the protection 
of the listeners: most listeners | have played the piece for 
tend to react to the vision as though they were there, 
which often leads to accidental injury and movement. 


Abstract: 

A Song of Hope and Home is a thirty minute long song, consisting of 
five movements. A listener that listens to the entirety of the song will 
experience a vision of my journey to the most beautiful thing that | 
have ever seen. This is a purely visual, auditory and tactile 
hallucination - at no point are listeners actually transported 
anywhere. During the duration of the piece, listeners are incapable 
of sensing any outside event. The five movements are: 


1. A short memetic primer to allow the memetic elements in the 
rest of the piece to have maximum effect (one minute) 

2. A vision of my life before | began my journey, which begins 
the induced hallucination (three minutes) 

3. The journey itself (twenty-two minutes) 

4. The most beautiful sight and my life after that (three minutes) 

5. Amemetic cleaner to remove the memetic primers and end 
the induced hallucination (one minute) 


Intent: 

Twenty years ago, | saw the most beautiful thing | had ever seen or 
would ever see. It was back when | was wandering the planes, 
searching for a new world to live in. My home was gone, and | will 
not speak of what happened to it. It has been two decades and the 
pain is still too raw. 


What matters is that | had been searching for a new world for three 
years. In my haste to flee a dying world, | took a poor method of 
crossing between worlds. It relied more on brute force to pass 
through planes than a targeted method, and so | was cursed to 
randomly sojourn. | passed through thousands of planes on my way. 


3592 worlds. 


Not one was even close to home. The vast majority of these worlds 
couldn't even support life and every time | passed through one | 
drained my rusting life support system, running out of air and water 
and food and hope. 


Every so often, | passed through a version of Earth that did support 
life and | was able to rip off my helmet. But make no mistake, these 
worlds were not cradles of civilization. These often were worlds 
locked in prehistory, ruled by titanic dinosaurs or children of night. 
These weren't suitable: | wasn't looking to survive, | was looking to 
live. 


The worst were the worlds that had already came and went. A 
wretched handful of them had life left to them, the remnants of 
humanity eking out a foothold in a world that had died. But again, 
they were surviving and not living. | could have survived in my old 
home, a horrid and brutal life. 


Other dead worlds were truly gone, paved over in a myriad of ways. 
Worlds in which every person was dead, worlds that were nothing 
but cake, worlds where | could not even find a corpse to cradle. 


It would be condescending of me to say that hope had left my life 
not long after | began my journey, it still trapped in Pandora's 
Amphora. That's obvious. You can tell it by now. 


And then, after 1274 days, | stepped out onto a dock in the New 
York City Harbor, drowning in light and people. | can't quite recall 
what happened next, as my next coherent memory is being treated 
in a hospital with tears on my face. It was basic kindness that had 
been absent in my life for too long. 


This world is not the same as my home, but it is close enough that | 
can accept it. In a certain sense, | wouldn't have it to be the same, 
because | would have been lying to myself that | had never left. My 
old home could never truly be replaced, but this is a home too. 


I've never been able to capture the totality of what | felt on that day. 
New York City was beautiful to me even in my old world, and that 
steel grandeur coupled with me finding a new, better world broke 
me. It wasn't the thousand worlds | walked through, but the one that 


| ended upon. 


Conventional methods have completely failed at letting others feel 
what | feel on that day. It's not just the skyline itself that was 
beautiful to me, but it had the added weight of everything that had 
happened to me in the preceeding years. They have always 
managed to capture some of it, but never the whole, never the 
entirety. 


So | turned to song. In 1934, Frederick von Hayek submitted an 
exhibit that consisted of a symphony that made listeners think they 
were on a Cliff face overlooking a waterfall. It did decently for the 
time because standards were lower back then, but in the end it was 
little more than a proof of concept. 


But there's a diamond in that rough, and | was able to make a ballad 
that puts listeners in my shoes. It goes quickly, but the beauty of 
magic is you can force ideas into people's heads. A single note of 
my song will carry hours of sights, sounds, inferences and learning. 


Perhaps with this, people will actually understand what | went 
through in its totality. It may not be enough, but | can only have 
hope. 


Project Proposal 2004-024: "My Father's Values" 


Name: Guy Chesapeake 
Title: My Father's Values 
Material Requirements: 


¢ Batteries (9 V, only one necessary while piece is active, to be 
replaced as needed) 

¢ Copper wire (1 mm cross-sectional area, ~3 feet needed) 

Silicon chips (5 cm x 5 cm, 3 needed) 

¢ Electrical components (see full list of necessary resistors, 
transistors, capacitors , etc. on back of page) 

* Solder 

Straight pins (~20 needed) 

Glass jar (1 needed, already in my possession) 

Formaldehyde (2.5 L, already in my possession) 

« Human brain w/ reality-altering capabilities (1 needed, already 
in my possession) 


Abstract: 


Programmed electrical stimulation of the brain of a reality warper will 
result in the periodic appearance of not-quite-people within 15 m of 
the brain's location. These not-quite-people (hereafter "actors") will 
carry out a series of predetermined performance art pieces. The 
central device will be situated in the main exhibition hall and 
activated at midnight, resulting in the following performance 
schedule: 


9:00 am - 5 actors will appear in a circular formation around the 
central piece, wearing nightwear. They will walk around the main 
exhibition hall while yawning loudly. Dissipates 5 minutes after 
activation. 


71:00 am - 1 actor in a suit will appear within 5 m of the central 


piece. He/she will offer to shake the hand of various patrons and/or 
employees. Handshakes of insufficient pressure will result in the 
actor breaking the weak shaker's hand through grip strength. (Not 
sure what happens if you don't shake his/her hand. Wouldn't advise 
that.) Dissipates 20 minutes after activation. 


12:30 pm - 1 actor wearing a tour guide uniform will appear. He/she 
will offer to give tours to entering patrons. Once 5 or so people have 
agreed, he/she will lead patrons around the main exhibition hall, 
explaining the significance behind each piece present there. These 
explanations will almost certainly be incorrect, based on superficial 
readings of each piece present. Tour guide will also occasionally 
insult the artist(s) who created a particular piece, unless he/she is 
talking about mine. Dissipates at conclusion of tour, which is about 
30 minutes long. Also dissipates if next performance is scheduled to 
begin, and not enough people have agreed to take the tour. 


4:00 pm - 2 actors (1 male, 1 female) will appear dressed in casual 
clothes. They will pretend to be ordinary patrons for 15 minutes. The 
couple will then get into an increasingly loud argument about 
something personal. This argument will escalate until one actor 
performs an act of violence against the other. Both will then weep 
loudly until dissipation. Dissipates 25 minutes after activation. 


6:30 pm - 1 actor will appear. He/she will lie on floor in fetal position. 
He/she will not cry. Dissipates 45 minutes after activation. 


8:00 pm - 1 actor will appear, with hammer and chisel. 1 stone block 
will also appear. The actor will use the hammer and chisel on the 
block in various places, eventually causing the whole thing to break 
apart into various chunks. He/she will yell profanities if approached. 
Dissipates 40 minutes after activation. 


9:00 pm - 5 actors will appear as far away from the central piece as 
possible, dressed in nightwear. They will walk around the main 
exhibition hall, yawning loudly. 2 minutes prior to dissipation, they 
will form a circle around the central piece. Dissipates after 5 
minutes. 


Warping reality is supposedly quite tricky. Warping reality 
posthumously is probably harder, especially when doing so relies 


largely on electrocuting specific parts of the reality warper's brain. 
This is not the first time I've set up a piece like this, but I've never set 
up a piece of this style with this many performances per day. Things 
should go roughly according to plan. Expect some improvisation 
from the actors. Try to keep people from forcing them to get out of 
character, and everything should be fine. Actors should be easy 
enough to subdue if they get out of hand - they all have regular 
strength, with the exception of the handshake guy's hands. 


Intent: I've heard a lot about how hard it is to grow up with the soul 
of an artist and overly pragmatic parents. | think that it's probably 
equally hard to grow up with the soul of an electrical engineer and a 
committed anartist as a father. 


| can neither deny nor erase the impact that my father has had on 
my life. He used to tell me that he was the best | was going to get, 
and I'd do well to follow his example. As near as | can figure, he 
wanted to instill in me the following values: 


¢ Punctuality 

¢ A firm handshake 

* Self-serving bullshit Creativity 
¢ Self-confidence 

¢ Emotional reservation 

¢ Passion 


| think we'd all do well to keep these in mind. | can't erase the scars 
of my childhood, but | can't ignore how much my father played a role 
in making me the man | am today. 


| suppose it's out of a sort of reverence for my father that | ended up 
making art after all. 


| suppose it's out of a sort of resentment towards him that | chose to 
do so by zapping his brain with electricity roughly fifty times a day. 


My father and | used to have a lot of hatred for each other, but | 
think we're cool now. 


Project Proposal 2014-733: "The Role of a Lifetime" 


Title: The Role of a Lifetime 


Materials: Tatemae 

One (1) "fagade"-type identity template 
Reality disruption agent 

The idea of Theater 

Megaphone 


Abstract: A simple director's megaphone, composed of a cone of 
wood, cardboard, or other suitably stiff material (the actual material 
of the device is irrelevant, so long as the device looks like the 
stereotypical director's megaphone). When "cut" is called through 
the device, it removes the learned behaviors and society norms of 
the individual, replacing them with those of the actor. 


In essence, the person will become convinced that rather than being 
whoever they thought they were before, that they are an actor 
playing their previous persona in a stage or film production. The 
individual recognizes his role in the grand farce of existence and 
acts accordingly, willingly taking direction from the user. 


The actors are some of the best I've ever worked with: compliant, 
patient, always willing to take criticism, and | believe their 
performance speaks for itself. My only complaint is that they have a 
tendency to fall into a role. If the direction goes too far away from the 
established role, the quality of their performance drops steeply. 


I’ve also found that the actors can leave the “set” entirely, going 
“backstage”. Not wanting to detract from the point of the piece with 
irrelevant ethical questions, | have avoided resuming the 
performance until all actors are accounted for. When | asked one of 
them what it was like, he seemed confused, saying “It’s... it’s 
backstage. Don’t you know what that is?” When | inquired further, he 
only seemed to get more agitated. This seems to happen whenever 
inconsistencies are pointed out. The actors don’t seem to 


understand the question, perceiving it as stupid or nonsensical. 


Intent: Like a lot of writers and directors, I've often wondered how 
"real" my characters are. If | could somehow manifest them in 
reality, would they function as people? | tried this in my 2005 piece 
Character Study. As that piece so beautifully demonstrated, while 
characters often appear to act as real people, this is a surprisingly 
thin disguise (apologies to gallery seventeen). 


This time, | decided to try the reverse. Rather than take a character 
and make them real, this piece takes a real person and reduces 
them to a character. Unlike Character Study, the piece acts directly 
on the audience, which | hope will give a more comprehensive 
experience. 


The piece is, first and foremost, meant to inspire doubt and 
questioning in the audience. Because both their normal state and 
their behavior within the scope of the piece feel equally real, lucid, 
and plausible, they are forced to come to terms with the idea that 
they may, in fact, be nothing more than someone else’s character, 
literally or figuratively. 


Characters, by their very nature, can only present the fagade of 
being a full human being. Even the deepest of characters cannot be 
whole conceptualized people, as this would imply that the author 
has developed a full extraneous personality (which is normally 
considered a sign of mental illness). 


By assaulting the locus of control of the audience, the piece attacks 
one of the most fundamental axioms around which the human 
experience is constructed: namely, that the individual is in control of 
their actions. Shifting the locus very rapidly from the somewhat 
internal position of the average psyche to the very much external 
environment present in the piece is meant to cause severe psychic 
disorientation. 


The secondary goal is to call attention to the discrepancy between 
the outward appearance, known in Japanese as tatemae, and the 

actual self, known as honne. The audience must then question the 
lies, the half-truths, the omissions that form their outward persona, 
and whether or not such a persona is an independent construction, 


[ACCESS DENIED] 
« SCP-586 | SCP-587 | SCP-588 » 


capable of existing as a concept on its own, or whether it is 
intrinsically linked to the internal, though not necessarily “true” self. 
By equating the tatemae facade used in polite society with the 
authorial fagade used to create fictional characters, the audience is 
left to simultaneously doubt their own moral integrity, as well as the 
very integrity of the world around them. 


Project Proposals 1964-01 1/1974-014 


Name: Mieszko Wojcik 
Title: Masoschism 
Material Requirements: 


« 40 m x 40 mclear plastic tarp (One needed) 

« 2msteel tent poles (Four needed) 

« 20 cm steel tent stakes (Four needed) 

* ~1 mrope loops to connect the two (Four needed) 

« Forks (20 needed) 

* Knives (20 needed) 

* Sharpener (One needed, already in my possession) 

¢« Wooden baseball bats (20 needed) 

¢ 60 mm x 2.5 mm iron nails (200 needed) 

« Hammers (20 neededq) 

¢ Stove (One needed) 

¢ Generator compatible with the stove (One needed) 

¢ ~1 mwire to connect the two (One needed) 

¢ Branding irons of any mark (10 needed) 

¢ Metal table (One needed) 

First aid kit (One needed, already in my possession) 

¢ Any unmentioned miscellaneous items which may be used to 
harm an individual (No bombs/diseases)