Funny way to pique curiosity

If you see members of the Institute for Infinitely Small Things at one of their public events, dressed in their white lab coats, rolling on the sidewalk or pantomiming in front of a billboard, it's OK to laugh. Humor is part of the hook they're using to get you to think about things like corporate slogans and street names, the little things most people take for granted.

But like the other groups profiled in the documentary "Radical Jesters," which premieres tomorrow at the Brattle Theatre, they're neither comedians nor an improv troupe. They're not even protesters. They're not advocating any particular message other than to make people question their environment a bit more and in a friendly way.

"The seductive part of something like the Institute for Infinitely Small Things is that hopefully what would happen is it would make people curious in a non-threatening way," says co founder Catherine D'Ignazio , "curious enough to ask what's going on, what's happening, and then some kind of other conversation happens. Or maybe they just walk by and are puzzled and maybe think about it later."

D'Ignazio, 31, and Savic Rasovic , 33, formed the group four years ago as a loose collective that can include anywhere from 10 to 20 members. They gather in public places dressed in white lab coats for their social experiments, publishing their results on ikatun.com/institute/infinitelysmallthings/ . Some call it street theater, but it defies labels. "I don't really care what people call it," says Rasovic. "To me, it firmly comes from the context of art , and it's influenced by activism and, I would say, digital culture."

That's part of what attracted director and musician Tim Jackson, who also teaches documentary filmmaking at the New England Institute of Art, to the group. "Radical Jesters," his documentary on political pranksters and hoaxers, covers the Institute as well as classic pranksters who use humor to overturn perceptions. These include Alan Abel , who started his Society for Indecency to Naked Animals in the late '50s, as well as the New York-based Surveillance Camera Players, who started in the mid-'90s and still stage their mini-plays for public security cameras.

"I'm trying to make people laugh and then think, and I think that the Institute is absolutely dead center on that," Jackson says. "They make people laugh, for sure. But they're not comedians. They're very funny and very charming, but their intention is not to pull off comedy or even pranks."

The Institute has several ongoing projects, including their New American Dictionary (which redefines terms such as "friendly fire" and "enemy combatant") and a map renaming Cambridge landmarks through public suggestions. Their most ambitious venture is called "Corporate Commands," an exploration of company slogans in the imperative that don't seem to have much to do with the product they purport to sell. To spur thought on the subject, the Institute has partied in a Sovereign ATM booth to illustrate the slogan "Enjoy Life" and formed a sort of human fence, rolling out of the way of passersby in front of a Cingular "Rollover" store sign.

Rasovic finds many of these commands hilariously absurd, like a McDonald's campaign for a chicken sandwich. The group stood in front of a sign that said "Become a Believer" asking pedestrians about psychic phenomenon. Half of Rasovic's job was done before the Institute even showed up. "This life we lead, this environment that we're in is often so absurd to me I feel that it's funny," he says. "It's funny on its own. So why not be funny about it?"