Last year I wrote here about a conceptual-art collective in Montana called Goatsilk; specifically, I had become a fan of a project they had put together last summer called Daily Treasures, in which they attempted to sell weird crap on eBay they were randomly finding around the Montana wilderness as "collector's items," then producing a series of short humorous videos about the theoretical exciting origins of each item, in an attempt to boost bid prices during their auctions.

And now this summer Goatsilk has gotten even more ambitious, launching an entire multi-platform project called "Killin' It! with Paul Crik," an attempt to create no less than an entire fictional new-age guru and corporate motivational speaker from scratch, and to see just how much real publicity they can get from the made-up character. Now, be warned from the start that what "Crik" has to say doesn't make much sense; but that seems to be kind of the point, with Crik himself spreading his babble not only through his own blog but also a series of YouTube videos, his own Twitter account, his own Facebook profile, and a lot more. It's brilliant in a diabolical way, just like all good conceptual-art projects should be, and it's apparently working -- the Goatsilk people readily admit at the site that their Paul Crik character is now being mistaken for real all the time, which of course has been the goal from the start. I highly recommend checking out the far-reaching crossmedia project whenever you have a chance; and of course, you can always "friend" Crik at his various social-network presences, if you'd like to help play along and keep the project as real-seeming as possible. I've become a big fan of Goatsilk over the last year, and I'm always looking forward to seeing what they're up to next.