[pen] if all else fails, come to Bath and *I'll* seduce you...

[Chalky] It wasn't that weird, really, kind of lazy. She just wanted a couple of groups of people to stand around and get served canapés by waiters and chat. I assume the idea was that by putting me and my friends in a gallery we, and our social interactions would have been decontextualised so we became the subject of the viewer's critical analysis. Something like that.

Which, I have to say, is the oldest trick in the book, only slightly leavened by the fact that standing around eating canapés and chatting is exactly what looks natural in a gallery, so we'd have been decontextualised and contextualised all at once, which may be a bit self-defeating.

[Projoy] But it would make the gallery seem less empty than it might otherwise, especially if the show was in danger of being cancelled for lack of interest. The idea occurs to me of an art show in which it only transpires afterwards that everyone there was an exhibit, no-one actually came to see it.

[Raak] But can it be considered Art if there is no audience?

Well, in that case the art would be its own audience, which saves a lot of mucking about, really.

[Projoy] stop it, you're making a customer-induced headache many times worse. stop it at once. yes I've been to work this evening, no it wasn't fun.

[Projoy] Hasn't someone done something *very* similar to that before? I seem to recall seeing it...

[Projoy] I presume you would have stood around discussing the visitors to the exhibit.

[Darren] I should think about, say, thousands of people have done something very similar to it. [CdM] Indeed. What else to discuss? It might have been quite funny if we'd been submitted as a portfolio piece and allowed to give the examiner a mark out of ten.

Has anyone done the "art" of having an empty room, getting hired people to stand around in this room looking at and discussing the pieces of art that aren't really there and then letting the public come in and be slightly bewildered?