A student artist who placed a fake bomb that forced an AIDS charity to cancel part of a black-tie fundraiser at the Royal Ontario Museum has been charged by police.

Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson, 24, who said the item was a "sculpture," faces nuisance and mischief charges. He turned himself in to police last night.

"I didn't expect anything as crazy as what went down," said Jonsson, a third-year integrated media student at the Ontario College of Art and Design.

OCAD – which suspended Jonsson from school as well as two faculty members, with pay – called the incident "totally unacceptable."

The museum was evacuated and surrounding streets shut down to traffic after what looked like three pipe bombs wrapped together with wiring were found just outside the glass-covered lobby early Wednesday evening.

A few hours later, two shaky videos depicting the apparent impact and aftermath of a fake bombing at the museum were posted to YouTube.

Jonsson said the fake bomb and videos were part of an art project he had presented to his video class Wednesday afternoon.

He said he left the fake bomb, which he described as a "sculpture," by the entrance to the museum around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Then he went to the nearest pay phone, dialled the ROM's main number and keyed random numbers into its automated staff directory.

"There is not a bomb by the entrance of the museum," Jonsson said he told the unknown woman who answered.

He then went straight to school and presented his project to his professor and classmates, who he said were impressed with the piece but surprised by his revelation.

He said he had no idea the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research was holding its annual black-tie fundraiser that night and that he fully expected the "sculpture" to be discovered far earlier than it was.

Elissa Beckett, the AIDS research foundation's executive director, was not amused at how the prank forced the charity to cancel the glitzy after-party to its annual Bloor Street Entertains fundraiser, which accounts for a third of its annual revenues.

"The outcome of having to cancel the ROM component of the event is a $100,000 loss to us," Beckett said, explaining the charity had planned a silent auction at the museum.

Jonsson said his conceptual art piece was inspired by the work of Marcel Duchamp, who is most famous for turning an ordinary urinal into an art object.

"By taking it out of its context as art and recontextualizing it, it takes on new meaning," he said of his plastic, wood and glass "sculpture" and the videos.

Jonsson said he consulted with a lawyer from the student union before he went ahead with his project and was told that being upfront about its being a fake would help protect him from the charge of spreading false news.

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Jonsson said he also kept all his friends and professors in the dark about planting the fake bomb so they could not be held responsible.

Martina Hwang, a graphic design student at OCAD, was one of those friends. She said Jonsson didn't mention the fake bomb when he asked her to act in the videos he shot with a cellular phone camera over the past two weeks.

"That's all I know. That's all I did," said Hwang who, when spotted on campus yesterday, was wearing the same hooded brown jacket, bright blue scarf and black-frame glasses she wore in the videos.