I will start off by quoting an article called "Fluxus Performance and Humour" written by Kristine Stiles:  "Goofing-off requires developing a fine-tuned sense of what it means to pause long enough and distance oneself far enough from worldly objects and events to recognize their illusory dimension and thereby reinvest the world with wonder.  In order to really good-off well, the instrumental sense of purpose deeply ingrained in Western ego and epistemology must be abandoned."  I feel that this element of 'goofing-off' or 'the artist's joke' is a fundamental element of our project.  The idea of recognizing the absurdity inherent in our existence requires an ability to distance ourselves from our everyday existence that we are entrenched in and acknowledge the purposelessness of everything.  Approaching these large issues through humor allows us to access such vast issues in a more relatable way.    
     We have changed our presentation a bit since the original ideation of the project, but I think that it serves our concept in a better way and makes it a stronger piece overall.  We plan on putting the box in plain sight and using very obvious yarn for the string instead of fishing line, along with a binder clip that attaches the yarn to the bill.  Since we are planning on making the elements of the age-old 'trick' (of putting a bill on a fishing line and tricking people into thinking they have found money) more conspicuous and obvious, it becomes a sculptural piece that is a parody of deception.  It uses the tenets of older forms of magic and trickery pranks and compares them to issues within contemporary and modern art which are related to illusion, deception, and truth.  Some of the main issues that have been prevalent in modern and contemporary art are ideas of failure and progress, and how these things relate to reaching an ultimate and universal truth.   Artists throughout the 20th and 21st century have been searching for the truest form of representation.  Of course, it got to be more and more extreme to the point where artists were painting nothing onto a canvas.  Or a something that resembles nothing.  Either way you look at it, it is still a form of deception and there is no way around creating an illusion in art.  This conundrum has frustrated artists for a long while.  This piece is in direct dialogue with these issues.      
    Since we are presenting something which is supposed to be more discreet, and we completely abandon the nuances which would make it a more deceptive trick, we are backhandedly acknowledging the issue of illusion within art and directly ask a question about what purpose illusion serves in a work of art.  What does illusion tell us about the art we make, and what does it tell us about how we interpret our existence?  What does the suspension of disbelief that is required of a viewer when he or she looks at a work of art say about the way in which a work of art functions?  Given this inherent illusionism in art, how effective can art be in forming our perception of ourselves?