Students at North Hampton College of Design will have their chance to participate in one of the art world's most creative gags as they attend lectures from a silent literal coke can that was hired as part of a creative prank by school administrators.
"You've seen the banana taped to the wall, the abstract paintings where children say, "I could have done that," and of course Duchamp's clever little jokes. Our school wanted to exemplify those same strides in modern art, so we hired an ordinary object from every day life to teach our studio art majors.
Some students dropped the class when they found out their professor was a coke can. "I just cant sit there in silence for two hours," said Janine Dawkins, a sophomore art student focusing on painting and drawing. "There's only so much you can learn from staring at a piece of junk from off the street.
Others actually felt that they were participating in art history by indulging the school. "I totally get it," said Fred Smith, who creates time lapse videos of books not moving at all. "It's like okay, you say the teacher is a piece of trash, and then it really is. And if the can gives you a C, what do you do? If that's not art, I don't know what is.
Some parents were mad that their children's tuition dollars were spent on something like a coke can for a teacher.
"Well actually," said the dean, "it didn't cost us that much. It was only a dollar fifty and then one of our grad assistants drank it before we hired the can. We've saved a lot of money and can pass this along to the school in other ways."
The thing that the school didn't think about was having to ask students to take the coke can back and forth from its office to the classroom.
"Well, it's kind of not my job," said Samantha Earl, who transports the can from time to time. "But I'm trying to be a famous artist."
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