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Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary and conceptual artist and activist. He is the most famous Chinese artist living today. He was born in 1957, and he currently resides and works in Beijing. As a political activist, he has been openly and highly critical of the Chinese Government's stance on democracy and human rights. He has been fighting for freedom of expression and human rights in China through his art, social media, and legal battles with the Chinese government.
Aesthetically, Ai Weiwei's works deal with Chinese society and their history. His works have been mainly based on a conceptual approach, on installation and sculpture. Political and economic climate of contemporary China most often serves as starting point for Ai Weiwei's art, and he uses local materials and resources like reclaimed wood from traditional Chinese houses and temples, vases, furniture, porcelain from the imperial kilns, freshwater pearls, bricks, tea, marble, stone and bamboo. Rather than a formal approach he often makes use of metaphoric references, humour, puns, and political irony, that redefines the meaning of the traditional into something new and unique. Ai Weiwei believes all activities or artwork should be social and political. He has often been involved in collaborations, in his large scale architectural projects. For him it is important to engage in debates and to exchange experiences. In the 1970's and 1980's he was a protagonist in a dynamic movement in China where a lot of activity saw its light on the Chinese art scene.
Ai Weiwei's career has steadily been gaining momentum in the past decades, due to his controversial exhibition "Fuck Off", his participation at Documenta 2007, and his design of "Bird's Nest".
Ai Weiwei's exhibition "Fuck Off"
The "Fuck Off" exhibition’s Chinese title, “不合作方式”, means “Uncooperative Approach” but the artists preferred the bold in-your-face English translation. "Fuck Of" shows off and emphasises the independent and critical stance that is basic to art existence, and its status of independence and freedom in the situation of contradictions and conflicts. It tries to provoke artist’s responsibility and self-discipline and raise questions about some issues of contemporary Chinese art.
The "Fuck Off" Cover
A catalog of the exhibition has been published, a black book with the simple title "FUCK OFF" on its cover. Ai Weiwei underlined the exhibition's artistic attitude with one set of photos in which he photographs himself flipping off important monuments around the world. He took pictures of his hand, with middle finger extended, in front of famous national icons from the White House to the Eiffel Tower.
Ai Weiwei's design of "Bird's Nest"
Beijing National Stadium, officially the National Stadium also known as the Bird's Nest is a stadium in Beijing. The stadium was jointly designed by architects Ai Weiwei, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. The stadium was designed for use throughout the 2008 Summer Olympics and Paralympics and will be used again in the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics. The Bird's Nest sometimes has some extra temporary large screens installed at the stands of the stadium.
In 2010 Art Review listed Ai Weiwei as number 1 on their Top 100 of most powerful people in the art world. In the past years he has provoked Chinese authorities in his out spoken critique of the lack of democracy and freedom of speech in China. Today Ai Weiwei's life is restricted, he is not allowed to leave his house without telling the police about his whereabouts. He is also under surveillance and is not allowed to travel or speak with the international press.
Tania Bruguera is a Cuban installation and performance artist. She was born in 1968 and grew up in Cuba. In the 1970s Tania Bruguera was educated to believe in the possibility of a Utopia which means an imagined place of things in which everything is perfect. Her faith faltered as she became aware of the contradictions within Communist Cuban propaganda. Now she lives and works between New York and Havana, and has participated in numerous international exhibitions. Over the past 20 years, Tania has become renowned for creating art that confronts major political concerns, particularly censorship. Her art often questions the nature of power structures, behaviours and values. Bruguera has consistently argued for art’s role as a useful agent for change utilising the museum as an active forum for public debate. Therefore her work is in the permanent collections of many institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, Bronx Museum of the Arts and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana. Her provocative art and works which champion freedom of expression, have repeatedly resulted in her being detained and interrogated by Cuban authorities.
Tania's work stages situations that look as real as possible. Her aim is to instigate social change and encourage transparency with the goal of transforming passive audience into active citizens. Her work Tatlin’s Whisper involves two mounted police officers performing crowd-control exercises. Bruguera was also in residence at Tate Modern with her ongoing project Immigrant Movement International in which the audience were required to line up and pass a lie detector test based on questions from the UK immigration form before being granted access to the museum.
Tania Bruguera's Tatlin's Whisper
During the performance, two mounted policemen in uniforms are brought into the museum or exhibition space. One of the policemen is on a black horse the other one is on a white horse. They control and patrol the space, guiding and controlling the audience by using some crowd control techniques. These include actions such as closing off the gallery entrance or entrances, pushing the audience forward with movements of the horses, manipulating the audience into a single group and encircling it to tighten the group and breaking up the audience into two distinct groups. The techniques used by the mounted police are common at major public events.
The artist Tania Bruguera is keenly aware that the experience of such forms of control changes radically according to the context in which they are encountered. A sporting event for instance is quite different from an unauthorised political demonstration under a more authoritarian regime. In the context of this performance the action has revealed certain particular characteristics, including the use of humour by the British police as an additional method of keeping the crowd and situation under control. This was infused with more direct commands, with the crowd playing along or becoming more wary accordingly. Examining the performance and experiences embedded within reality, the work reflects on the complex relationship between agents of authority and the people they aim to control. She mainly makes performances and installations that use silence and self-censorship as a means both to impose and resist power addressing the relationship between art, politics and everyday life. Tania uses performance to create direct experiences of, commentaries on political structures, appropriating the tools used by systems of power themselves.
Derek Jarman was born on January 31, 1942 in London. He was a film director, stage designer, diarist, artist, gardener, author. and a cinematographer, known for Edward II, Caravaggio and Wittgenstein. Jarman was diagnosed as HIV positive and discussed his condition in public. His illness prompted him to move to Dungeness in Kent near a nuclear power station. In 1994 he died of an AIDS-related illness in London aged 52. Jarman's first films were experimental Super 8mm shorts, a form he never entirely abandoned, and later developed further in his films Imagining October, The Last of England and The Garden as a parallel to his narrative work. The Garden was entered into the 17th Moscow International Film Festival. Jarman first became known as a stage designer. His break in the film industry came as production designer for Ken Russell's The Devils. He made his mainstream narrative filmmaking debut with Sebastiane, this was one of the first British films to feature positive images of gay sexuality, its dialogue was entirely in Latin. He followed this with Jubilee released in 1978, in which Queen Elizabeth I of England is seen to be transported forward in time to a desolate and brutal wasteland ruled by her twentieth-century namesake. Jubilee has been described as "Britain's only decent punk film".
During the 1980s, Jarman was a leading campaigner against Clause 28, which sought to ban the promotion of homosexuality in schools. He also worked to raise awareness of AIDS. His artistic practice in the early 1980s reflected these commitments in The Angelic Conversation, a film in which the imagery is accompanied by Judi Dench's voice reciting Shakespeare's sonnets. Jarman spent seven years making experimental Super 8mm films and attempting to raise money for Caravaggio. Released in 1986, Caravaggio attracted a comparatively wide audience and is still probably Jarman's most widely known work. This is partly due to the involvement of the British television company Channel 4 in funding and distribution. Funded by the British Film Institute, Caravaggio became Jarman's most famous film to date and marked the beginning of a new phase in Jarman's filmmaking career.
Derek Jarman's most famous films
Caravaggio is one of Derek Jarman's most accessible films, and his most beautiful. Caravaggio brings together many of the typical elements of Jarman’s filmmaking. Thematically, it explores the tortured sad state of the artist, homosexual love and the hypocrisy of a religious authority. It also showcases Jarman’s capacity for playfulness, with cheeky anachronisms appearing in the 17th-century setting, such as an electronic calculator and a typewriter. The scenes recreating some of Caravaggio’s paintings are unnatural, you might double-take when realizing the painting they are looking at is really a tableau vivant.
Derek Jarman's work was intensely personal however it was also supremely collaborative. He worked with many of the same people in front of and behind the camera on each of his projects. He welcomed and encouraged contributions. A champion of film art and a dedicated experimentalist, he was a critic of what he saw as the repressive commercialism of mainstream cinema. Always struggling for funds, Jarman produced his first seven features for a combined cost of only $3 million. His final film Blue was his most unconventional, an unchanging field of blue over which we hear voices and sounds. The screen of the movie Blue remains plain and unchanging during its 72 minutes. Over the blue surface of the screen, the voices of four actors, close friends of the director, the speech of the director himself, the sound effects and the music narrate Derek Jarman's experience with the AIDS virus, alternating the description of the progress of the virus with deep considerations on poetry, art and life.
Bill Viola is a video artist whose artistic expression depends upon electronic, sound, and image technology in New Media. His works focus on the ideas behind fundamental human experiences such as birth, death and aspects of consciousness. He was born 1951 and grew up in Queens, New York. He is internationally recognised as one of the leading artists of our time, an acknowledged pioneer in the medium of video art. For over 40 years he has been making work that explores a series of humanistic and spiritual issues. His works include room-size video installations, sound environments and electronic music performances. He has also worked for television broadcasts, concerts and opera. Viola’s video installations immerse the viewers and the audience in image and sound employing state of the art technologies distinguished by their precision and direct simplicity. His work is found in museums and galleries and distinguished collections worldwide. His single-channel videotapes have been broadcast and presented cinematically all over the world. Viola uses video to explore the phenomena of sense perception as a direction to self-knowledge.
Bill Viola's art deals largely with the themes of human consciousness and experience such as birth, death, love, emotion and humanist spirituality. An ongoing theme that he constantly explores is dualism. Dualism is the belief that there are two kinds of realities: material or physical and immaterial or spiritual. One way to understand this concept is to consider our self as a container including our physical body and physical brain along with a separate non-physical mind, spirit, or soul. The mind, spirit, or soul is considered the conscious part that manifests itself through the brain in a similar way that picture waves and sound waves manifest themselves through a television set. The picture and sound waves are also non-material just like the mind, spirit, or soul. His work can be divided into three types, conceptual, visual, and a unique combination of the two. Viola's use of ultra-slow motion video encourages the viewers to sink into the image and connect deeply to the meanings contained within the video. His striving toward meaning and attempts to deal with the big themes of human life make his work deeply appreciated by critics, audiences and collectors. His most famous video art projects are "Reverse Television", "The Quintet Series", "An Ocean Without A Shore" and "Bodies Of Light'.
Bill Viola's Reverse Television
The project Reverse Television was about portraiture and the idea of a person staring at the viewer as the viewer stares at the TV screen. He inverts the position of the television viewer in a series of forty-four portraits of individuals sitting at home in their living rooms, staring silently at the static camera as though it was a TV. His project momentarily inverts the classical TV and viewer relationship and television becomes a medium of reverse portraiture. It is the silence materialised within an extended time which makes the project so significant and interesting. Bill Viola imposes this silence against the fury of a television greed for images and noise, emptied of all expectation.
Some screenshots of the portraits of individuals in the video
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Bill Viola's The Quintet Series
The project the Quintet Series was started in 2000. It is a set of four separate videos that show the unfolding expressions of five actors in such slow motion that every minute detail of their changing expressions can be detected. As the sequence begins, their neutral expressions begin to change as the emotion, different for each person overtakes the group and builds to an extreme level. After some minutes it finally subsides leaving each person drained and exhausted. The individuals experience the rising emotional energy independently with no direct interaction with their companions, other than occasional physical contact due to their close proximity. The group stands before a neutral background with no sign of the outside world. In the course of the event they do not move from their original positions and no one leaves the frame. Extreme slow-motion playback makes the smallest details and subtle expressions visible creating a psychological space where time is suspended for performer and the audience alike. The series is challenging for the viewer to follow or understand because the concentration required to follow the facial expressions over time must last for minutes or more. In general, the distortion of time, along with the lack of sound or voice over makes it weird however interesting and provoking
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Qualitative Research
The Qualitative research involves looking in-depth at non-numerical data. This means looking at sources such as archival records, artefacts, participant observation and interviews. The aim of qualitative research is to understand the reality of individuals, groups and cultures as close as possible as its participants feel it or live it. Research following a qualitative approach seeks to explain how and why a phenomenon or behaviour operates as it does in a particular context.
Quantitative Research
The Quantitative research aims to establish laws of behaviour and phenomenon across different settings or contexts. This Research is used to test a theory and ultimately support or reject it. Quantitative methods emphasise on objective measurements and the statistical, mathematical and numerical analysis of data collected through polls, questionnaires and surveys.
Conspiracy theories are far from a new occurrence. They have been a constant buzz in the background for at least the past 100 years. They are also more widespread than people might think. People almost always assume that when something happens, it happens because someone or something made it happen for a reason and this is because humans are very good at recognising patterns and regularities but sometimes people overplay that and they start seeing meaning and significance when it isn't really there. Essentially, people see some coincidences around big events and they then make up a story out of them.
Purple colour: My own opinion
In my opinion conspiracy theories are both interesting and intriguing. People always come up with different ideas or theories for unexplained events even if they seems crazy. The more demented, the more interesting therefore the crazier the story, the bigger number of people reading about it, enjoying it and some even believe in them. People always desire for understanding and certainty therefore when an event happens and people do not understand why it happened they quickly find answers to those questions, the answers are not necessarily true however they comfort them and fit into their worldview. People also desire for control over their lives therefore conspiracy theories can give their believers a sense of control and security. This is especially true when the alternative belief feels threatening. Overall, this emphasise that creating a project on something which is unknown and yet people are so drawn to would in fact be able to spark personal opinions as well as debates as individuals would be able to express to others what they believe and what they understand on the matter as well as share any unique photography, artwork as well as evidence they have. As a result, this may open up the minds of others and get them intrigued in the subject and start their journey into the unknown. I believe that through these artworks I would also be able to represent the beliefs of others and gratify that audience as they may feel in a sense understood as they are not the only ones open minded to what is going on around them.
Belief in conspiracy theories appears to be driven by motives that can be characterised as epistemic which means understanding one’s environment, existential which means being safe and in control of one’s environment, and social which means maintaining a positive image of the self and the social group. In recent years, there has been growing interest in the psychological factors that drive the popularity of conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories are consequential as they have a real impact on people's health, relationships, and safety and they are universal as belief in them is widespread across times, cultures, and social settings. All social media and the Internet is filled with conspiracy theories. These theories range from highly implausible or unlikely in light of logic or scientific knowledge to theoretically possible or even plausible. In fact, conspiracy theories sometimes turn out to be true.
Project SUNSHINE
In the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Project SUNSHINE was a series of research studies to discover the impact of radioactive fallout on the world's population and the human body. The conspiracy theory people believed was that the government was stealing dead bodies and dead babies to do radioactive testing. This turned out to be true. The government was stealing parts of dead bodies. Because they needed young tissue, they recruited a worldwide network of agents to find recently deceased babies and children, and then take samples and even limbs. Each collected without notification or permission of the more than 1,500 grieving families. Many of the 1,500 sample subjects were babies and young children, and were taken from countries from Australia to Europe often without their parents' consent or knowledge. According to the investigation launched after a British newspaper reported that British scientists had obtained children’s bodies from various hospitals and shipped their body parts to the United States, a British mother had said that her stillborn baby's legs were removed by British doctors. She was forbidden to dress her daughter for her funeral in an attempt to prevent the mother from finding out what had happened.
https://www.rd.com/culture/conspiracy-theories-that-turned-out-to-be-true/
Government Mind Control/MK-ULTRA
The conspiracy theory people believed was that the CIA was testing LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs on Americans in a top-secret experiment on behaviour modification. This turned out to be true as the experiments were real. The project was called Project MKULTRA or the CIA mind control program. It was the code name given to a program of experiments on human subjects that were designed and undertaken by the United States Central Intelligence Agency and which were at times illegal. The projects conducted most of the time were on unwitting and clueless U.S. citizens to assess the potential use of LSD and other drugs for mind control, information gathering and psychological torture. In the 1950s and 1960s the United States government feared that Soviet, Chinese and North Korean agents were using mind control to brainwash U.S. prisoners of war in Korea. In response The CIA approved Project MK-Ultra in 1953. The secret operation aimed to develop techniques that could be used against Soviet bloc enemies to control human behaviour with drugs and other psychological manipulators. The program involved more than 150 human experiments involving psychedelic drugs, paralytics and electroshock therapy. The agency kept notoriously poor records and destroyed most MK-Ultra documents when the program was officially stopped in 1973. The CIA experimented with LSD. They believed the agency could harness the drug’s mind-altering properties for brainwashing or psychological torture. MK-Ultra also included experiments with MDMA, mescaline, heroin, barbiturates, methamphetamine and psilocybin. MK-ULTRA left many victims permanently mentally disabled.
https://www.rd.com/culture/conspiracy-theories-that-turned-out-to-be-true/
A lot of the documents were destroyed by CIA however thousands of documents from the project MK-ULTRA, the Central Intelligence Agency’s mind control program, have still been released explaining the whole illegal project. Here is a couple of pages to get an idea.
If interested you can see more documents on MK-ULTRA here:
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000707674.pdf
Governments Spying On The Citizens
The conspiracy theory was that with the advances in technology, the government is using its vast resources to track citizens and spy on them in various ways. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a major nonprofit organisation that defends civil liberties in the digital world and advises the public on matters of internet privacy, in 2016, government agencies sent 49,868 requests for user data to Facebook, Google and to Apple. It has been revealed that the NSA program called Optic Nerves. Captured webcam images every five minutes from Yahoo users’ video chats and then stored them for future use. It is estimated that between 3% and 11% of the images captured contained undesirable nudity. Government security agencies like the NSA can also have access to people's devices through in-built backdoors. This means that these security agencies can tune in to anyone's phone calls, read their messages, capture pictures of them, stream videos of them, read their emails and steal their files at any moment they please. It isn’t just the government that people are worried about: It’s also the companies behind the social media, email accounts, and any kind of phones. PRISM is a code name for a program under which the United States National Security Agency (NSA) collects Internet communications from various US Internet companies. PRISM collects stored Internet communications based on demands made to Internet companies such as Google LLC to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms. The NSA can use these PRISM requests to target communications that were encrypted when they traveled across the Internet backbone, to focus on stored data that telecommunication filtering systems discarded earlier.
https://www.rd.com/culture/conspiracy-theories-that-turned-out-to-be-true/
Documents indicate that PRISM is the number one source of raw intelligence used for NSA analytic reports,and it accounts for 91% of the NSA's Internet traffic acquired. The leaked information came to light one day after the revelation that the FISA Court had been ordering a subsidiary of telecommunications company Verizon Communications to turn over to the NSA logs tracking all of its customers' telephone calls.
Why Conspiracy Theories Are So Popular And Famous
Although conspiracy beliefs can occasionally be based on a rational analysis of the evidence, most of the time they are not. As humans, one of our greatest strengths is our ability to find meaningful patterns in the world around us and to make causal inferences. We sometimes, however see patterns and causal connections that are not there especially when we feel that events are beyond our control. The attractiveness of conspiracy theories may arise from a number of cognitive biases that characterise the way we process information. “Confirmation bias” is the most pervasive cognitive bias and a powerful driver of belief in conspiracy theories. We all have a natural inclination to give more weight to evidence that supports what we already believe and ignore evidence that contradicts our beliefs. The real-world events that often become the subject of conspiracy theories tend to be extremely complex and unclear. Early reports may contain errors and contradictions and those wishing to find evidence of a cover-up will focus on such inconsistencies to bolster their claims.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-some-people-believe-in-conspiracy-theories/?redirect=1
I chose to look at the most famous conspiracy theories as they are also among the most interesting ones. This is due to most people only believing in well thought out and researched theories as even if they sound demented people have some sort of understanding or proof that the theory could be true. In my opinion, the theory that the government is hiding UFOs and the knowledge of alien existence is one of the best and the most interesting theories ever. There is so much photographed and captured footage of UFOs and also mysteries around army bases such as Area 51. Of course, all the footage could be fake and a hoax. As my goal is to start a debate or a conversation, my audience can discuss this between themselves and figure out which conspiracy theory is the most interesting to them. This would also allow them to express their own opinions and the reasoning behind their beliefs. In addition, I believe that putting the most popular and developed conspiracy theories in the spotlight would also allow me to attract a wider audience and create a wider debate. This is because as there are so many different stories when it comes to the more popular theories, a lot of people would have different stories an different understandings. As a result, this will lead to more opinions being debated and looked into as there would be more to talk about. This emphasises that the audience would start a conversation which is my main aim of this project. In conclusion, this would allow me to reach my main goal as well as give me more context to talk about an develop if I see any new or interesting opinions which I would want to represent further on.
The Most Famous Conspiracy Theories
Secret Groups Controlling The World
This conspiracy proposes that a secret group called the Illuminati has been secretly controlling the world and is looking to create a one world government. Their end-goal is supposedly to create the New World Order which will dissolve national boundaries and people's identities, while allowing for total authoritarian control. Many influential historical and contemporary figures have been claimed to be part of a faction that operates through many front organisations to orchestrate significant political and financial events, ranging from causing systemic crises to pushing through controversial policies at both national and international levels, as steps in an ongoing plot to achieve world domination. People claim that people who have made a deal with the Devil to gain wealth and power have become pawns in a supernatural chess game to move humanity into accepting a Utopian world government that rests on the spiritual foundations of a syncretic-messianic world religion, which will later reveal itself to be a dystopian world empire that imposes the imperial cult of an “Unholy Trinity” of Satan, the Antichrist and the False Prophet.
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1860871_1860876_1861005,00.html
The Attacks On 9/11 Were An Inside Job
A community of people “truthers" has emerged around the idea that the terrorist attacks on 9/11 were actually orchestrated by the U.S. government, stemming from the White House itself. They believe the Bush administration had advanced knowledge of the attacks and allowed them to happen so they could invade Iraq and advance their agenda. The “truthers" claim that jet fuel from the planes was not enough to melt the steel beams of the World Trade Center towers, which were actually brought down by a controlled demolition. This theory was, of course, widely debunked but continues to live on. One reason for the idea's longevity is that historical facts did prove that the war in Iraq was justified using incorrect information about the supposed existence of weapons of mass destruction. There are also many other conspiracy theories that attribute the planning and execution of the September 11 attacks against the United States. Proponents of these theories assert that there are inconsistencies in the commonly accepted version, or evidence that was either ignored or overlooked. Another prominent belief is that the Pentagon was hit by a missile launched by elements from inside the U.S. government. Other conspiracy theories revolve around authorities having advance knowledge of the attacks and deliberately ignoring or assisting the attackers.
Since the attacks, a variety of conspiracy theories have been put forward in Web sites, books, and films. Many groups and individuals advocating 9/11 conspiracy theories identify as part of the 9/11 Truth movement. Some of the conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks do not involve representational strategies typical of many conspiracy theories that establish a clear dichotomy between good and evil, or guilty and innocent; instead, they call up gradations of negligence and complicity.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-42195513
Lizard People/“Reptilians" Are Running The World
This is a very sci-fi, Hollywood variation on secret groups controlling us and the world. People believe that the top echelon of our government is actually controlled by shape-shifting reptilian aliens, who have been lording power over humans to make them into mindless slaves for their own purposes. The idea of shape-shifting lizards taking human forms in a plot to rule America and the world has become one of the most majestic and marvellous conspiracy theories created by mankind. Lizard people are cold-blooded humanoid reptilians who have the power to shape-shift into human form. According to David Icke, a new-age philosopher and one of the most prominent theorists in the lizard people theories, these creatures have had their claws in humankind since ancient time and world leaders like Queen Elizabeth are all lizard people. Sometimes people catch strange-looking frames of the world leader's face on TV. While most people would casually dismiss this as just a video glitch, conspiracy theorists believe that these distortions are not in the video itself, but in the electronic holographic disguise worn by the world leader. They believe he, along with many other prominent people, is a reptilian being.
https://www.vox.com/2014/11/5/7158371/lizard-people-conspiracy-theory-explainer
In my opinion, the belief that lizard people are among us and they are running and controlling the world is stupid and crazy. There are crazy beliefs that seem to be at least a bit believable even if they sound stupid at first however with this conspiracy theory nothing actually makes sense. It just sounds like a sci-fi movie. This all mainly comes from video glitches. Back in the day if someone paused a VHS tape there would be a lot of compression forming creating jitter and flash and sometimes flickering between two frames, and that every edge would shatter into interlacing lines. It was easy in those days to pause a video and see just about anything you wanted to see. In modern times this conspiracy theory has been debunked numerous time. The cause for this is the advent of high-definition video. Today when we pause a video, there is much less compression artifacting. As this conspiracy theory seems to be too unintelligent, I will not be including it or exploring it in any of my created content. There would also be no point in exploring this belief further as in my opinion most of the audience would have the same opinion on it, it being that the conspiracy theory is false and stupid. As a result, this conspiracy theory would not have the same effect or impact on my audience as they would not want to waste their time sharing their ideas and thoughts on it. In addition, as mentioned previously due to the theory being debunked this may make my project seem unreliable to the audience meaning it would gain less attention and fewer interactions as all their opinions would be the same.
Alien Cover-ups/Aliens Are Contacting Us
A variety of events come under the rubric of beliefs in alien contact. Among these are mysteries like the alleged 1947 crash of a flying saucer/UFO in Roswell, New Mexico. On 8 July 1947 the Roswell Daily Record newspaper published an article with the headline “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region”, and the legend of America's most famous brush with aliens was born. Today, many conspiracy theorists consider the so-called “Roswell incident” to be one of the most conspicuous and credible of evidence that the US government has covered up the existence of extraterrestrial life on Earth. Next month after the incident thousands of people from all over the world would travel to the town, the de facto UFO capital of the world, but the Roswell story's position in the public imagination was far from immediate. On 8 July 1947 Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) issued a press release stating that a “flying disk” had crashed on a ranch near Roswell during a powerful storm. Later in the day, as government scientists arrived in the area, the story appeared to change. A press conference was held and it was stated instead that a weather balloon had crashed. It was accompanied by a photo of the “crash materials” that’d supposedly been misidentified as a flying saucer. Years later, a public information officer named Walter Haut, said the photo was staged and the materials shown weren't from the crash site. Additionally, an article ran saying that the rancher who initially found the saucer was harassed, and regretful that he’d talked about it. In 1978, UFO researcher Stanton Friedman reignited the Roswell controversy. Friedman interviewed Jesse Marcel, the officer who originally assessed the crash site. The officer said he didn’t believe it was a weather balloon and described the material in detail. "It felt like you had nothing in your hands; it wasn't any thicker than the foil out of a pack of cigarettes. But the thing about it that got me is that you couldn't even bend it, you couldn't dent it, even a sledgehammer would bounce off of it... I knew that I had never seen anything like that before." He also said, "It was not anything from this Earth, that I'm quite sure of... I was familiar with just about all materials used in aircraft and/or air travel. This was nothing like that...It could not have been."
https://www.theweek.co.uk/us/59331/roswell-ufo-crash-what-really-happened-67-years-ago
Upon requesting files from Roswell Air Force Base, it was discovered that all records from January to October of 1947 were destroyed. The person or organisation who destroyed the files, and the authority under which they’d done so weren’t indicated. According to a local radio personality named Frank Joyce, Brazel said that there were alien bodies at the scene. Supposed witnesses also gave consistent descriptions of the alleged alien bodies. They were said to be short in stature, with large heads, large eyes, and only a hole for a nose. In 2008, a flight engineer named William Ennis, who was stationed in one of the Roswell debris receiving hangars, flat out said it was a spaceship that crashed. "It was a spaceship. After all these years, I still don't know how that ship flew. There was no engine! Before I go, I would like to know." There was also an alleged "memory metal" found amongst the scattered debris.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/sep/30/alien-photo-roswell-new-mexico-mystery
There has also been a number of other incidents were UFOs were spotted such as the Rendlesham Forest incident where In late December 1980, there was a series of reported sightings of unexplained lights near Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England, which have become linked with claims of UFO landings. Another incident was the Battle of Los Angeles, The Battle of Los Angeles, also known as The Great Los Angeles Air Raid, is the name given by contemporary sources to the rumoured attack by Japan and subsequent anti-aircraft artillery barrage which took place from late February 24 to early February 25, 1942, over Los Angeles, California. A photo published in the Los Angeles Times on February 26, 1942, has been cited by some ufologists and conspiracy theorists as part of evidence of an extraterrestrial visitation. They assert that the photo clearly shows searchlights focused on an alien spaceship. One other event or an incident was the Petrozavodsk phenomenon. The Petrozavodsk phenomenon was a series of celestial events of a disputed nature that occurred on September 20, 1977. The sightings were reported over a vast territory, from Copenhagen and Helsinki in the west to Vladivostok in the east where a glowing object was widely reported that showered the city with numerous rays. Most sightings occurred between 1:00 and 1:20 a.m. when at least 48 unidentified objects reportedly appeared in the atmosphere. Several sightings occurred before, at 1:00a.m. local time over Medvezhyegorsk, at 2:30 a.m. over Loukhi and at 3:00 a.m. over Kovdor and Palanga (Lithuania). Another detailed account on one unidentified object was given by Soviet writer and philosopher Yuri Linnik. He observed the object on his dacha near Namoyevo at about 3:00 a.m. through an amateur telescope with an 80× magnification. That lens-like object, surrounded by a dim, translucent ring, had a colour of a "dark amethyst, intensively lightened from inside".
Another credible modern incident or evidence of extraterrestrial existence was The East Coast GO FAST Video (2015). It was leaked in 2017 along with the news of the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, was a video that revealed an encounter between an F/A-18 Super Hornet and an unidentified flying vehicle. Seen along the East Coast on a Raytheon Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) Pod, the craft was similar to that spotted off San Diego in 2004: a fast-moving white oval about 45-feet-long without wings or exhaust plume. The pilots tracked the object at 25,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean as it flew away and simultaneously rotated on its axis. No explanation ever emerged.
https://www.history.co.uk/shows/ancient-aliens/articles/do-aliens-exist-most-compelling-evidence-of-alien-existence
As in my opinion, the theory that the government is hiding UFOs and the knowledge of alien existence is one of the most interesting theories ever. I decided to explore it deeper and in more detail. Believing in UFOs is definitely one of the most widespread alternative beliefs, with ongoing explorations of the topic in cultural products and a steady stream of first-person claims that are spread through the Internet. Are we alone? Unfortunately, neither of the answers feel satisfactory. To be alone in this vast universe is a lonely prospect. On the other hand, if we are not alone and there is someone or something more powerful out there, that too is terrifying. While viewing my art piece surrounding the conspiracy theory of UFOs and alien existence, I want my audience to ask themselves these questions. As this topic is so widespread it is seen in the media very often. This therefore implies, That the audience I am targeting would very likely be familiar with this subject indicating that they would already possibly have a strong opinion on the matter. As a result, this would ensure they would be able to carry out an interesting and capturing conversation with other individuals interacting which would initially allow them to share new evidence with each other and stories or even possibly their own experiences. As a result, I believe this would gain higher media attention and more interactions as this conspiracy theory constantly has new stories and new evidence meaning that a constant conversation can be held and it can further be explored. High levels of interaction can intrigue more audience meaning new people would be finding and hearing about my project which would lead to the other conspiracy theories represented gaining more interactions as well.
The Moon Landing Was Faked
One of the most significant scientific and political achievements of the last century, landing on the moon, often comes under attack. Some people believe that the landing did not happen and its appearance was orchestrated by NASA/American government as part of the Cold War, to raise national pride and one up the arch-rival Soviet Union. They believe that NASA faked the lunar landings with Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin acting out their mission on a secret film set, located either high in the Hollywood Hills or deep within Area 51. With the photos and videos of the Apollo missions only available through NASA, there's no independent verification that the lunar landings were anything but a hoax. One of the most popular theories as to why the Moon landings couldn’t have happened has to do with something called the Van Allen belts. These are two huge belts of radiation that surround the Earth, shaped by Earth’s magnetic field and pounded with high-energy particles from the Sun’s wind. It’s been claimed that humans couldn’t have passed through these belts without being fried with lethal doses of radiation. Radiation sickness occurs when you have been exposed to around 200 to 1000 ‘rads’ of radiation within a few hours. However the Apollo 11 crew were within the belts for less than two hours during their journey to the Moon, and so would have only been exposed to an estimated 18 rads – well within the safe limit. There can still be some adverse effects from even this level of radiation, so NASA made sure that the Apollo 11 spacecraft was well-insulated such that the average dose of radiation over the 12-day mission was just 0.18 rads, or similar to the radiation dosage from a chest X-ray. Another ‘giveaway’ that the landing was faked comes from the footage of the American flag that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin placed on the Moon. From photos and video, it appears to be flapping in the wind. However there is no air on the moon so the flag couldn't have fluttered. In video footage of the flag being planted into the Moon’s surface, it also appears to wave back and forth. This is because when the astronauts were planting it, they rotated it back and forth to better dig into the lunar soil, which of course made the flag ripple as it swung like a pendulum- without a breeze. There’s a huge amount of footage of the flags stood on the Moon in exactly the same position.
Speaking of the flag photographs, it’s often pointed out that there are no stars to be seen in the background.This is actually a common feature of photographs from space, where the contrast between light and dark is extreme. The surface of the Moon reflects the strong sunlight and appears very bright in photographs. This brightness drowns out the relatively dim light from stars in the dark sky, akin to how car headlights can drown out the fainter light from nearby objects. The human eye can adjust and pick out the stars, but unless it’s set to the right settings, a camera struggles with the contrast. Astronauts on the International Space Station today regularly take photographs of the Earth that show a completely starless background, but it’s the same problem of contrasts at work. One of the subtler arguments against the Moon landings has to do with non-parallel shadows. If the Sun is the only source of light, why do some shadows appear to point in multiple directions? For example, in the picture on the left, the astronaut’s shadow matches up with the lander’s, but there seems to be another shadow from the lander foot pointing towards the astronaut. Actually, a rough, uneven surface can cause all sorts of shadows at different angles, even with a single light source like the Sun. This something that can be easily experimented with at home. The combination of the Moon’s rough surface and the long shadows from a Sun low in the sky can easily create complicated shadows. The weird shadow in the picture is likely created by an uneven ridge that extends towards astronaut and a low-angle Sun. People also argue about the moon landing being staged or faked with the infamous rock prop labelled with a ‘C’ from the Apollo 16 mission. Movie props are often numbered and lettered so that stagehands know where to place them. The theory goes that the rock in the photo (image below right) is a prop that someone must have accidentally placed facing the wrong way.But in fact, the label simply isn’t there. The image of the rock is taken from a much larger shot of the Moon’s surface, and if you look at the original image shown (below left), the marking isn’t there. Either a small hair or piece of thread must have got caught in the machine while it was being copied (image below right). There also a number of websites which address arguments against the Moon landings such as clavius.org, earthsky.org and sservi.nasa.gov.
https://spacecentre.co.uk/blog-post/know-moon-landing-really-happened/
President Obama Wasn't Born in the U.S. and May Be a Secret Muslim
During Barack Obama's campaign for president in 2008, throughout his presidency and afterwards a number of falsely conspiracy theories where the conspiracy stated that Obama was ineligible to be President of the United States because he was not a natural-born citizen of the U.S. as required by Article Two of the Constitution. This untrue proposition was famously championed on Twitter and elsewhere by the current President Donald Trump. The theory that Barack Obama was actually born in Kenya and is not a natural-born citizen and thus ineligible for U.S. Presidency was used to delegitimise President Obama. Theories alleged that Obama's published birth certificate was a forgery and that his actual birthplace was not Hawaii but Kenya. Other theories alleged that Obama became a citizen of Indonesia in childhood thereby losing his U.S. citizenship. Still others claimed that Obama was not a natural-born U.S. citizen because he was born a dual citizen British and American. A number of political commentators have characterised these various claims as a racist reaction to Obama's status as the first African-American president of the United States. Despite Obama producing a long-form birth certificate to placate the doubters showing that he was born in Hawaii to a Kenyan father and an American mother, Republicans still expressed skepticism about the President's place of birth. The release of the certificate in 2008 resulted in a fresh round of questions. It was asserted that the certificate had been digitally forged with Adobe Photoshop and lacked a stamped seal of the state, which led them to demand that Obama release his "original" 1961 birth certificate. Another aspect of this conspiracy alleges that Obama is actually a Muslim, although he is a very well-documented Christian. This idea is fuelled by Obama living with his Muslim father as a baby and speaks to the anti-Muslim fears stoked by politicians and talkshow hosts.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/29/16713664/trump-obama-birth-certificate
Chemtrails/Government Controlling The Weather
Another conspiracy theory mainstay, this idea says that the trails you can spot in the sky behind planes are actually “chemtrails" some kind of chemical sprayed by the government to control the population. "Chemtrail" conspiracy theorists vary in their claims. But some of the most popular include the belief that governments control the weather on a massive scale, that scientists carrying out legitimate research about how to counteract climate change through a process called geo-engineering are secretly poisoning us, or even that secret powerful groups are spraying us with chemicals to make us pliant and easy to control. Those who subscribe to the theory speculate that the purpose of the chemical release may be solar radiation management, weather modification, psychological manipulation, human population control, or biological or chemical warfare and that the trails are causing respiratory illnesses and other health problems. Some people claim trails left by aircraft in the sky are evidence of a government conspiracy. Weather modification or at least attempting it, has a long history. The Leningrad Institute of Rainmaking was established in the Soviet Union in 1932. Chinese authorities used cloud seeding to ensure the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics wasn't washed out. Geo-engineering deliberate intervention in the Earth's natural systems to counteract climate change is a newer field of research. While scientists have talked about it, there's been very little being physically done most of the research in the field relies on computer modelling. Proponents of the chemtrail conspiracy theory say that chemtrails can be distinguished from contrails by their long duration, asserting that the chemtrails are those trails left by aircraft that persist for as much as a half day or transform into cirrus-like clouds. The proponents claim that after 1995 contrails had a different chemical composition and lasted a lot longer on the sky.
Various versions of the chemtrail conspiracy theory have been propagated via the Internet and radio programs. There are websites dedicated to the conspiracy theory, and it is particularly favoured by right-wing groups because it fits well with deep suspicion of government. Professor David Keith of Harvard University, is among the most prominent scientists calling for further research. He told the New York Times he knows of only two instances where one of the most controversial proposals has been tested in the field. It's called solar geo-engineering and involves atmospheric aerosol injection of tiny reflective particles to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the earth and thus cool the planet. Similarly, successful weather modification efforts have been localised and certainly not on the grand scale some conspiracy theorists claim. Nonetheless, "chemtrail" and geo-engineering conspiracy theorists flood social media with speculation, questions and images of contrail cross-hatched skies.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-42195511
"The Holocaust Did Not Happen" Conspiracy Theory
Holocaust deniers are those who believe or claim that the Holocaust either did not occur full stop or that it did not occur to the extent that is commonly believed and supported by overwhelming historical evidence. A favourite topic in certain conspiracy theorist circles, Holocaust denial has also been propagated on the world stage, most famously by the former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.But whether the denial is occurring in an online forum conversation or in the speech of a world leader, the reasons given for why anyone would make up the Holocaust or exaggerate events is usually the same that Jews did so for their own political or economic gain. While it is difficult to dispute that Holocaust denial is based on anything other than anti-Semitism, deniers often point to common misconceptions about the Holocaust or areas where evidence is genuinely lacking to bolster their claims. They make use of the fact that research on the extermination camps has been difficult because the Nazis themselves concealed their existence or that early news reports wrongly used images of Nazi prisoners of war alongside descriptions of the extermination camps. But deniers also ignore the fact that the Holocaust is one of the best documented genocides in history and their claims have been roundly and thoroughly discredited by academics. Some of the most prominent representatives of Holocaust deniers have been shown in court to have a pattern of falsifying historical documents or deliberately misrepresenting historical data. This history of Holocaust deniers distorting, ignoring, or misusing historical records has led to almost universal condemnation of the techniques and conclusions of Holocaust denial with organisations such as the American Historical Association, the largest society of historians in the United States, stating that Holocaust denial is "at best, a form of academic fraud." Research into Holocaust denial has revealed that the principal actors in this field have been motivated by anti-Semitism. Indeed, the very first Holocaust deniers were the Nazis themselves. Hitler's SS chief, Heinrich Himmler, instructed his camp commandants to destroy records, crematoria and other signs of mass extermination of human beings as Germany's defeat became imminent. Following the end of World War II, many of the former leaders of the SS left Germany and began using their propaganda skills to defend their actions. Shortly after the war, denial materials began to appear.
https://www.ushmm.org/confront-antisemitism/holocaust-denial-and-distortion
The Holocaust denial movement grew into full strength in the 1970s with the publication of Arthur Butz' The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The case against the presumed extermination of European Jewry in 1976 and David Irving's Hitler's War in 1977. These books, seen as the basis of much of the deniers' arguments, brought other similarly inclined individuals into the fold. On 545 pages of study and commentary, Dr. Butz gives the reader a graduate course on the subject of the Jews of World War Two Europe. One main focus is on Auschwitz, which during WWII was a strategically important location of German petrochemistry. Information about this location had been available to the Allies for a long time. The fact that the claimed exterminations had to be known to the Allies but obviously were unknown to them, has always been sheer inexplicable for experts in the field. The first edition of this book caused unprecedented shockwaves throughout the academic and political world in the 1970s. It's open sale has been banned in an increasing number of countries including Germany and Canada. It is a book violently denounced by those unable to refute its thesis the most hysterical reactions to it coming from those whose own historical views cannot withstand the light of honest review.
"The Earth Is Flat" Conspiracy Theory
Members of the Flat Earth Society claim to believe the Earth is flat. Walking around on the planet's surface, it looks and feels flat so they deem all evidence to the contrary, such as satellite photos of Earth as a sphere to be fabrications of a "round Earth conspiracy" orchestrated by NASA and other government agencies. The belief that the Earth is flat has been described as the ultimate conspiracy theory. Judging by the exhaustive effort these believers have invested in fleshing out the theory on their website, as well as the staunch defences of their views they offer in media interviews and on Twitter, it would seem that these people actually believe the Earth is flat. There are a couple of different explanations. One of the most commonly accepted explanation of this is that the space agencies of the world are involved in a conspiracy faking space travel and exploration. This likely began during the Cold War's 'Space Race', in which the USSR and USA were obsessed with beating each other into space to the point that each faked their accomplishments in an attempt to keep pace with the other's supposed achievements. Since the end of the Cold War, however, the conspiracy is most likely motivated by greed rather than political gains and using only some of their funding to continue to fake space travel saves a lot of money to embezzle for themselves. Another explanation is a religious angle which says the existence of a globe Earth doesn’t need God but the existence of a dome needs some sort of creator. So they believe the ‘government’ is hiding the dome or the flat Earth because that proves God’s existence, and they don’t want to give up their control to religion. Another theory explains that there are actually continents outside of our Antarctica that are full of the elites and the rich and the powerful and they want to keep that a secret so no one’s allowed to go into space because they don’t want people to go to the other continents. The evidence the believers have for a flat earth theory is derived from many different facets of science and philosophy. The simplest is by relying on ones own senses to discern the true nature of the world around us. The world looks flat, the bottoms of clouds are flat, the movement of the Sun, these are all examples of our senses telling us that we do not live on a spherical heliocentric world. This is using what's called an empirical approach or an approach that relies on information from your senses. In general, the Flat Earth Society normally do not lend much credibility to photographic evidence. They believe it is too easily manipulated and altered. Many of the videos posted to "prove a round earth" by showing curvature will show no curvature or even concave curvature at parts. They believe the sources are so inaccurate it's difficult to build an argument on them in either case.
https://www.livescience.com/24310-flat-earth-belief.html
Modern flat Earth societies are organisations that promote the misconception that the Earth is flat rather than a globe. Such groups date from the middle of the 20th century; some adherents are serious and some are not. Those who are serious are often motivated by pseudoscience or Biblical literalism. Through the use of social media, flat Earth theories have been increasingly espoused by individuals unaffiliated with larger groups. They have even created their own website which I have visited to get an idea of what their ideas are and what they are about. I also visited their forums to see how many people believe in this conspiracy theory and how many of them are immersed and go online to talk to other people about it. The forum mainly consists of random stuff and nonsense such as "Fortnite: When will it die?" and "What I want for xmas". From this you can easily see that the believers believe in it however no one else is taking it seriously. There are also simple and quick ways to prove that the earth is round. The first being the moon. Aristotle who made quite a lot of observations about the spherical nature of the Earth noticed that during lunar eclipses when the Earth’s orbit places it directly between the Sun and the Moon, creating a shadow in the process, the shadow on the Moon’s surface is round. This shadow is the planet's and it’s a great clue about the spherical shape of the Earth. Another being in a plane. Planes can travel in a relatively straight line for a very long time and not fall off any edges. They can also circle the Earth without stopping. Also If you look out the window on a trans-Atlantic flight you can, most of the times see the curvature of the Earth on the horizon. You can also easily prove the earth is round with the existence of time. As soon as it's 12:00pm in New York, the sun is in the middle of the sky. In Beijing, it’s 12:00am, midnight and the sun is nowhere to be found. In Adelaide, Australia, it is 1:30am. More than 13 hours ahead. There, the sunset is long gone so much so, that the sun will soon rise up again at the beginning of a new day. This can only be explained if the world is round, and rotating around its own axis. At a certain point when the sun is shining on one part of the Earth, the opposite side is dark, and vice versa. That allows for time differences and time zones, specifically ones that are larger than 12 hours.
https://www.popsci.com/10-ways-you-can-prove-earth-is-round#page-3
In my opinion,the theory that the Earth is flat is very stupid and idiotic. There is a large number of ways to disprove this theory. For example stuff like the Moon and the shape of other planets, the horizon, varying star constellations, different shadows and also the existence of time zones are all great and easy ways to tell that the Earth is not flat but round. For example,the existence of time zones can only be explained if the world is round and rotating around its own axis. At a certain point when the sun is shining on one part of the Earth, the opposite side is dark, and vice versa. I was not going to include it and explore it through my artworks however I decided to still include the artwork I created for this theory on my Instagram as I was curious to see what opinions others have on this. Although this theory is not very realistic I believe this theory was created for the purpose of gaining attention and giving others something else to believe in although it is not true. I believe that although this theory may not be true in my eyes it would draw attention to my whole project overall. This is because many influencers on social media platforms such as Instagram believe in this theory and stand behind it. This emphasises that through the right use of hashtags I will be able to attract that audience (which is a really large group of people considering influencers followers overall.) The reason this will be so effective is that once social media influencers share their opinion with their audience they are more likely to believe it as the influencer they trust and adore does as well. This would mean that audience would be able to appreciate this artwork and as a result, lead to them sharing their opinions and starting a conversation. In conclusion, this would enable the audience to explore the other theories demonstrated and continue to keep up to date with the conspiracy theories as well as share their thoughts which would also lead to more interactions and possible create a secondary target audience which would overall widen the number of people interested in this topic.
Primary Research
For my primary research I decided to conduct some interviews online and do some vox pops in person too. I started off by going online and finding some different websites that are talking about conspiracy theories to interview them and get some opinions on the four conspiracy theories: government knowing about 9/11, the moon landing being faked, government secretly covering up UFOs and aliens and the Earth being flat. I have looked at these websites and decided to interview of the them as I wanted opinions and explanations from strong believers. I have contacted the following websites so far:
http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/
https://www.conspiracyarchive.com/
https://www.parcast.com/conspiracy
I have also contacted David Icke through his website. I believe if he responded, he would give me some strong opinions and explanations as he is a professional conspiracy theorist. He is famous for theories such as Infinite dimensions and Reptoid hypothesis. In the infinite dimensions theory he proposes that the universe is made up of "vibrational" energy, and consists of an infinite number of dimensions that share the same space, just like television and radio frequencies, and that some people can tune their consciousness to other wavelengths. In the reptoid hypothesis he proposes that an inter-dimensional race of reptilian beings called the Archons have hijacked the earth and are stopping humanity from realising its true potential. Icke believes that a genetically modified human/Archon hybrid race of shape-shifting reptilians, known as the "Babylonian Brotherhood" or the Illuminati, manipulate global events to keep humans in constant fear, so the Archons can feed off the 'negative energy' this creates.
I also wanted to interview some content creators therefore I have gone to instagram. Through Instagram direct messages I contacted two content creators, a Youtuber and an artist. I contacted fantastic daily who is a Youtuber. He makes scary YouTube videos for his audience's entertainment. He makes the unexplained and the unknown entertaining for viewers looking for scary stories. On his channel he talks about all kinds of stories from conspiracy theories to stories submitted by his fans. His Instagram page consists of conspiracy theory posts and posts notifying his viewers that he had uploaded a new video to his Youtube channel. I sent a direct message to him asking for his opinions on the four conspiracy theories I am displaying in my catalog and artworks. I also contacted an artist named Trevor Henderson. Trevor Henderson is an illustrator, found-footage artist and horror comics creator in Toronto, Canada. He grew up on a steady diet of horror films, weird comics, video games, cartoons and monsters. He mashes real photographs with drawings of original monsters and wraps them together in found footage-style packaging. “Found footage” is typically a filmmaking style, but Henderson uses it in his art. He makes all of his art without any story to go along with it, as the drawings allow you to come up with your own scary tales for each deeply unsettling piece. Below you can see some of his art. I contacted him through Instagram and I also emailed him asking for his opinions on the conspiracy theories.
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I have waited a couple of days for the interviewees to respond however they have not. I therefore decided to find some books surrounding the most famous conspiracy theories and read some of them to get an idea of what authors think of these conspiracy theories. The first book was called "Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in Postwar America". It is non-fiction book written by Peter Knight. His book Conspiracy Nation provides a wide-ranging survey of conspiracy theories in contemporary America. In the 19th century, inflammatory rhetoric about slave revolts, the publicised spectre of the black rapist, and the formation of the Ku Klux Klan all worked as conspiracy theories to legitimate an emerging sense of national consciousness based on an ideology of white supremacy. Today, panicked responses to increasing multiculturalism and globalisation yield new notions of victimhood and new theories about conspiratorial plans for global domination. Offering up a provocative array of examples, ranging from alien abduction to the novels of DeLillo and Pynchon to Tupac Shakur's paranoid style, Conspiracy Nation documents and unearths the workings of conspiracy in the contemporary moment.
https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/conspiracy-nation-the-politics-of-paranoia-in-postwar-america(b037af36-f423-47e6-afaa-f5ca49144c53).html
The next book I looked at was called "The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial". It is a book by Jerome Clark. The UFO Book delves into 200 intriguing topics, from claims of aerial phenomena in medieval times to the Heaven's Gate tragedy, examining the evidence in an open-minded manner. It states the facts with meticulous scholarship and permits readers to decide whether or not extraterrestrials exist. An abundant resource section describes UFO-related organisations, publications, and web sites. Author of several books on the paranormal and a three-volume masterwork on UFOs, Jerome Clark is an American researcher and writer, specialising in unidentified flying objects and other anomalous phenomena; he is also a songwriter of some note. Clark is one of the most prominent UFO historians and researchers active today. Although Clark's works have sometimes generated spirited debate, he is widely regarded as one of the most reputable writers in the field. Hi is also the former editor of the UFO magazine Fate, and past vice president and current board member of the J. Allen Hyneck Center for UFO Studies. He's spent the last four decades in search of the truth about close encounters, researching, analysing, and bringing to light anything remotely connected to what the world identifies as UFOs and extraterrestrial life.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/713092.The_UFO_Book
The third book I looked at was called "The Moon Landing Hoax: The Eagle That Never Landed". It is a book by Dr Steven Thomas. Was the Apollo 11 Moon landing faked? Many people argue that in the 1960s the United States lacked both the ability and technology required to put a man on the Moon. At the height of the Cold War and with Kennedy's promise to put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade many have questioned the official story. Was the Moon landing one of the greatest ever hoaxes or did NASA really put two men down on the moon in 1969? This detailed book examines the evidence, the photographs and the people to find out the truth.
https://www.bookdepository.com/Moon-Landing-Hoax-Eagle-That-Never-Landed-Dr-Steven-Thomas/9781906512477
Influences/Inspirations
When I started thinking about and brainstorming my outcomes I chose to design and make a catalog. My main inspiration to make a catalog was Ai Weiwei's "FUCK OFF" catalog of the exhibition. “Fuck Of” emphasises the independent and critical stance that is basic to art existence, and its status of independence, freedom and plurality in the situation of contradictions and conflicts. It tries to provoke artist’s responsibility and self-discipline and raise questions about some issues of contemporary Chinese art. In the exhibition there is one set of photos in which he gives the finger in turn to the White House, the Forbidden City and the viewer. What influenced me was not the art exhibition itself but the catalog of the exhibition that was published, a black book with the simple title “FUCK OFF” on its cover. I liked how simple however still effective the cover was. The use of only black and white. And also the white borders. As my starting point I tried to reuse the white and black colours used in Ai Weiwei's catalog. I also replaced the Chinese writing with my own logo but placed the main title underneath the logo where the Chinese writing is in Ai Weiwei's catalog. I however started experimenting with this look. I turned it into landscape first as I thought in my case it would look more aesthetically pleasing. I also removed the white borders.
http://gofuckyou.altervista.org/ai-weiwei-fuck-off/
I then started experimenting with the design and the title. My title or the way I wrote it was influenced and inspired by OFF-WHITE c/o VIRGIL ABLOH. Off-white is a fashion label founded by American creative designer Virgil Abloh. The brand's clothing uses stylised items like its use of zip ties, yellow industrial buckle belt design, and its four-way arrows that create a cross, and has collaborations with Nike, Levi, Jimmy Choo, IKEA and Évian. The brand is also famous and known for the use of quotation marks. Quotation marks are one of the many tools that Abloh uses to operate in a mode of ironic detachment. Abloh rejects the who-did-it-first mentality of previous generations in favor of the copy-paste logic of the Internet and its inhabitants. His new order is protected by a fortress of irony. By presenting words as citations, Abloh is taking them out of context, and questioning their seriousness. When he puts “Sculpture” on the side of a handbag, he’s provoking the viewer. What’s the difference between a handbag and a piece of art, really? You can use typography and wording to completely change the perception of a thing without changing anything about it.
https://www.highsnobiety.com/2017/08/30/virgil-abloh-off-white-quotation-marks/
In my opinion Ai Weiwei's "FUCK OFF" cover works perfectly as it is simple and has a simple colour scheme however it still looks professional and gets the message across. In my opinion, the cover work also is able to put a spotlight on the text and brings it out as well which I believe makes it highly effective. It therefore influenced me to make a simple however, still maintain a professional looking cover for my catalog. My cover was also influenced by OFF-WHITE as I wanted to add fashionableness and modernity to my work. This is because OFF-WHITE is one of the most popular and most wanted street wear brand/label of this generation. This may therefore create a sense that the audience will want to get involved with my artwork as they would be captured by the over as well as it would create a feeling that this is highly demanded. It is sought-after by all types of people ranging from teens to adults. Adding fashionableness and modernity to my work will also help me attract my audience as my target audience is the demographic group E ranging from ages 16 to 24. They would be attracted by the design as it would seem more familiar to them. In addition, the black colour in my cover work will create a sense of mystery and attract the audience to join this journey of the unknown. Furthermore, black can also be used to bring out and text which I believe is true as it has effectively been able to achieve this as it brings out the typography which as a result, could stimulate and interest in what this catalog will be about.
Social Media
Instagram is a photo and video-sharing social networking service. It features feeds. Instagram Feed is a place where people can share and connect with other people and things they care about. When someone opens Instagram or refresh their feed, the photos and videos we think you care about most will appear towards the top of your feed. In addition to seeing content from people and hashtags you follow, you may also see suggested accounts that are relevant to your interests. Instagram is no longer just about showing pictures to your friends, it has became both a representation of people, and their craft. In order to get a unique, attention-getting, and ultimately memorable Instagram feed you have to curate it. First of all the theme or the aesthetic, there must be consistency in what you post: your message has to be clear. You have to specificity something you are going to have to abide by. You have to shape visual messages using the same aesthetic or style. Another way to curate an Instagram feed is the grid. When someone goes to a page and begins scrolling through the images, that is The Grid. It’s the overall look and feel of someone's profile. A cohesive flow through the scroll is ideal and depending on what the person is trying to achieve, the order in which they post their photos could play a factor as well. In simple terms the Grid is the quick and easy way for someone to see what the page is all about, and make their choices accordingly. Before Instagram was all about taking a photo, posting it and checking your likes, now it’s important to set aside a few hours a week to make a plan. The grid, the theme, the content, when to post, and how often to post all need to be factored in while planning. It is also good to take into account the time of day someone is posting in order to hit those peak scrolling hours. Before you post, you have to make a plan taking all of the things above into consideration. Whether it’s the theme, vibe, style, aesthetic, the grid, or how often someone posts, consistency is key.
http://resourcemagonline.com/2018/10/how-to-curate-your-instagram-feed/93211/
Cohesive Instagram feeds
These feeds work well as the same cohesive aesthetic and vibes are shown all throughout the feed.
A generic Instagram feed
The Instagram page's grid
These grids work well as they both show the theme and feel of fashion. As soon as someone goes to these Instagram pages, they can see that the focus of the page is fashion. This is because the grid shows off the overall look and feel of the profiles. The grid being cohesive also helps and works well.
To further analyse and see how people curate they Instagram feeds, I decided to go on my own Instagram and look through the pages that I follow personally. While scrolling through I found two pages I follow that had interesting feeds. The first page being Magnus. Magnus Ronning is a streetwear influencer and a streetwear enthusiast who dedicated his Instagram account to the type of clothing. By looking at his grid and his feeds, you can see the page mostly focuses on fashion and streetwear. This page is well curated as the theme is consistent and cohesive and all of the posts focus on the clothing he is wearing. The second Instagram page I looked at and analysed was Genius. Genius is an American digital media company. Founded in 2009, Genius is a unique media company that’s powered by community, their in-house creative team, and the artists themselves. They serve music knowledge to over 100 million people each month on Genius.com and everywhere music fans connect across the internet. The in-house creative team at Genius spotlights the stories behind the music that matter most. They work with artists and the community to transform insider knowledge into videos, events, in-depth features, breaking news coverage, and a variety of music knowledge content for the masses. Their Instagram page is well curated as their main focus is always music and the lyrics of the songs. The theme is always consistent. Their posts are always focusing on the same theme and aesthetic which also works well. The use of the same colours throughout the feed is also consistent which makes their page cohesive and more eye-appealing.
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In my opinion, an Instagram page would work perfectly as another outcome as it allows people to connect with anyone to learn and share their thoughts and enables two-way conversations. It also exposes people to different points of view, new ideas, and gives the power to research those opinions and discuss them with others. This works perfectly as my aim is to start a conversation between people and allow them to share their thoughts with everyone else interested in this topic. I believe that uploading my art pieces to the Instagram page will also be beneficial and will work well as Instagram focuses on visual content. People are visual beings and they process visuals 60,000 times faster than plain text, making visual content a lot more popular than textual information. For this reason, I will also make different visual content such as typographic designs as diverse content will attract a wider audience and help them share their thoughts.
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