Indie Fest USA 2009

During the Mid-Seventies to the Late Eighties there was a popular role-playing game similar to Dungeons and Dragons called “Bob”. It was invented by a wide group of artists, graphic illustrators, and Harvard University advertising students. A virtual entire world and society consisting of a war-ravaged ‘Road Warrior’ civilization combined with cheesy 50’s iconic advertising symbols and slogans; mixed with music and subliminal messages all rolled into a single point of view that provided a playful public forum that appealed to intellectuals and people involved with the media and those in a position to communicate mass messages in radio, movies, and television. Anyone educated in the principles of this game could spot the intentional references as they appeared in popular mass media. The players would then wink at each other and say, “Aha!” There were many elements to the complex structure of this game, which made it very sophisticated and playable on different levels ranging from superficial to even very intense and disturbing references. This was designed to promote interest by challenging the intellectual boundaries of any individual interested in participating in this public art project. Although it seems as if the game was designed to be just a public IQ test to challenge all types of artists, I believed there were some even deeper elements to the project, with which I personally became involved. The executors of the game were pumping pieces of the puzzle and grand design into society during a period of great unrest and dissatisfaction in the country, so much so that the US government realized the potential of this game: that it might possibly give a sense to large groups of people who were questioning and placing demands on the legislature at the time that they may be provided some kind of cathartic response from a governing body that had no solutions to offer its citizens. I walked right into the middle of this in 1990 when I noticed a specific pattern appearing in the game and I saw an opportunity to take over the entire game completely; drawing the attention of the whole intellectual community directly on to me, bringing focus and awareness to a disease that at that time would not even be publicly acknowledged. Meanwhile, everyone I knew was sick and dying, and I mean everyone. I chose to take action. I became “Bob”. In August of 1990 I distributed 10,000 flyers on Castro Street of a cartoonish manifesto, with the content on this document intended to be ‘bad and dangerous’ information for an individual to possess. The intended effect was to ‘release a virus’ on a society that had no cure, which was spread from one person to the next by word-of-mouth. This flyer mentioned AIDS awareness as the purpose of the document, and employed the subliminal reference strategies of the role-playing game already in place throughout the country. The ‘Silver Bullet’ of this manifesto was that it contained several easy-to-make recipes for a frightening array of homemade weapons of all types. Imagine picking up that piece of paper off the ground; then imagine looking around and seeing 10,000 copies of that piece of paper blowing around up and down the street, in a gay community no less. I did this anonymously, however there was quite an uproar over this stunt and I was somehow regarded to be the culprit, even though I did nothing to make myself intentionally known. Technically, I did not commit a crime by dispersing this volatile x-rated information. I was never confronted or questioned by any authorities about the incident. The police and news media realized that this was an art project designed to mimic an uncontrollable deadly virus. If any legal authority acted to stop the ‘virus’, then they would be providing documented recognition to establish its foothold to spread on an even wider level. If any newspaper or TV broadcast said anything to announce facts regarding the incident, they would be participating in the spread of this as well. The police knew that I was responsible for launching this event, and they knew that I wasn’t talking to anybody about it. Nobody had ever seen one person do anything like this before. The government decided to make an example of me and try to censor all facts about this project on a large scale. Of course, it didn’t work and my virus had spread internationally from one person to the next, even to this day, and it always will. The censorship was firmly in place, and people were just too intimidated by fear and by my notoriety. My message had probably reached a million people, but not one person ever directly confronted me. Please remember in 1990 there was no Internet, email, cell phones, or US terrorism. What freaked people out the most was that one single individual could communicate such a dramatic message to such a large audience by tricking people into passing it along one person at a time. So how could I be rewarded by my supporters for such an accomplishment: to bring large-scale focus on the AIDS crisis and also exposing the government as being laughably lame in trying to cover up information that was already popularly known? The easiest thing to start with is music. You know they have always written songs about war heroes and soldiers and that’s what happened to me, by many of the top performers in the music industry. REM started it with their album “Out of Time” in 1991, having written song after song and album after album regarding the many facets of my tale. Similarly, Depeche Mode, U2, and many others chimed in on this new version of the game, which extended my influence well into the late 90’s and even into today if you know who and for what to look.