Artist tries to profit from stunt

An artist who helped touch off a terror scare in Boston by planting electronic devices around the city as part of a marketing stunt isn't running from his past. In fact, a year later, he is incorporating it into his art and trying to use it to make a buck.

Peter Berdovsky, who goes by the name Zebbler, has embraced the notoriety he gained after his Jan. 31 antics on behalf of Cartoon Network's "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" show.

He proudly displays the "Artist of the Year" designation he won from a local magazine for causing the stir. He even offers for sale prints of the hospital mural he and friend Sean Stevens painted as part of their court-ordered community service for the stunt.

He jokingly refers to himself as the "Aqua Teen Terrorist."

"I view media attention as useful to my potential success as an artist," he said. "Any exposure is good for me."

Berdovsky and Stevens were paid to hang the lighted boards as part of the promotion. Similar devices in other major cities were ignored, but Boston closed bridges, roads and public transit before authorities realized the signs showing a cartoon character giving the finger were not bombs.

The two initially were charged with placing a hoax device in a way that causes panic and disorderly conduct. But the charges were dropped when the men agreed to community service, and even prosecutors said they were unlikely to win the case because they would have to prove the men intended to create fear.

Stevens, 29, a computer consultant, has settled back into anonymity, but Berdovsky and his huge dreadlocks are still recognized in public.

"I think I'm starting to realize that it's beyond my 15 minutes of fame," Berdovsky said in a recent interview in his studio. "It's probably going to just stay in people's minds for quite a while."

Berdovsky, 28, came to the Boston area from his native Belarus in 1996 and graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art. His main focus is a video art form that is so new there is no single name to describe it. It includes productions that "mash" other artists' material into his own.

One piece captures the stress of Boston traffic by combining superfast images and still shots of a man holding a stopwatch that is moving backward.

Berdovsky has also been splicing scenes from the Aqua Teen scare into his work.

In the past year, Berdovsky has performed before the Austrian ambassador in Washington, and played events in Chicago, Alaska and the Berkeley Art Museum in California, where he performed an anti-war piece.

Nevertheless, Berdovsky said he is still struggling financially, and he works at a studio inside a beat-up industrial building in Charlestown that is afflicted with bedbugs, bad pipes and noise from woodworking shops.

He said his expensive video and audio equipment was bought on credit, and he may have to sell some of it to pay the bills.

Richard Rinehart, the Berkeley museum's digital art curator, said 500 people showed up the night Berdovsky was there, "and they were all enraptured by his performance."

Rinehart said he hired Berdovsky on a recommendation from another artist, not because of his Aqua Teen infamy. Not that that would have hurt.

"That kind of political mischievousness plays well at Berkeley," Rinehart said.