political fireworks! I plan to design and set off a series of fireworks customized to create unique and subversive visual images with an emphasis on both provocative iconography and the ephemeral nature of the medium. Watch as the Israeli flag morphs into an attack helicopter! Revel in the sight of the bloated department chair dissipating to the four winds! Cheer as the almighty dollar shrinks to a penny due to inflation! projected completion date: Nov. '07

MFA as IPO! Following an aggressive media PR campaign, I plan to "go public" on the evening of my MFA opening reception. My thesis will be formatted like a financial portfolio, with assets, liabilities, projected earnings, etc. My "stock" will be attractively priced and lauded as "a good investment." Wish me luck as I test my financial worth as I pass ritualistically from private to public, academic to real-world market conditions. projected completion: Nov. '07

Cognitive Manifesto of Surrealism! After months of extensive research, I will unveil long lost documentary evidence of Andre Breton's notorious cognitive test to determine whether any given subject is a true surrealist or just a vaudeville comedian with a gift for incongruity. The test, based on event-related potentials, which track neural electrical responses to calculated stimuli via a net of sensors placed on the scalp, consists largely of absurdist sentences (such as "The man rubbed his warm bread with socks") meant to be read by subjects one word at a time. According to Breton, only a true surrealist wouldn't bat an eye at the final word, and using this reasoning, he culled the umbrellas from the sewing machines during the great Surrealism wars of the late 1920s. projected completion date: Nov. '07