(intro)

Paradox of Conspiracy Recognition

A collage of familiar conspiracy imagery

Even though you are surrounded by complete strangers, chances are quite high that everyone in the room had the same associations. At the same time, it is quite difficult to pin down what exactly makes an image look “conspiratorial”. You’ll recognise one when you see one, but other than that... Is is the color?
Theme?
General composition?

We don’t know.

But tried to figure it out.

So, here it is SHORT GUIDE TO VISUAL LANGUAGE OF CONSPIRACY THEORIES

(Lesson 1)

Show, Don’t Tell

We understand images much faster than text — it is easier for us to sympathise with something easily recognizable than it is with a bunch of black spots on white background (=letters). Because of that many conspiratorial graphics rely heavily on schematics and maps.

A collage explaining schematics and maps

A visual explanation of how schemes communicate rationality and trust

David Dees
is Nuts

The definition of reality changes hands depending on whose spinning the webs, Artist’s like David Dees present alternative narratives by using simple framing - the type of thing you might find on a Youtube thumbnail or Web article header.

The back bone of this approach lies within exploiting the logical brain, asking it to draw a comparison between the two subjects in a new fabricated context, probing you to find the link and ask whether it changes your perception of the ‘pedalled’ narrative, challenging you to use your analytical brain to draw new meaning from the reframed imagery, like how a shrink might show you a Rorschach test and push you to search for a meaning buried beneath the blots.

This applies even to handwritten text: it’s about looking real

(Lesson 2)

New Realities
Need New Languages

But what if you have a different goal?
A different message?
A message that has no interest in existing to appease logic but exists to question that logic, to reframe an our entire reality?

This is the mindset that underpins THE MOST PREVALENT CONSPIRATORIAL GRAPHIC STYLE, the style you are started imagining at the beginning of this article.

Early personal webpages and GeoCities graphics

A style of design birthed from the early web aesthetic that was simply modern web design, not an aesthetic but the digital uniform of the GEOCITIES ERA.

Geo cities was a pre-tumbr platform that shaped the visual language of the first wave digital expression, hosting and categorising personal webpages by interest and beckoning in this new web-based world

A collage of early web spirituality and UFO imagery

HTML Web 01 diagram showing heavily airbrushed rainbow psychosis

However, the true figurehead for this graphic style was pioneered by a subsection of conspiracy entitled UFO Religions, all of which deify some sort of cosmic being, often pulling from a mixture of religious symbols, theological teaching and figureheads presented through the narrative of a great awakening or alternative state of being.

Glowing artefacts, geometric patterns and calming imagery

A radiant cosmic collage surrounding Earth

Religions like ‘Universe People’, ‘Heavens Gate’ and even ‘Scientology’ beckoned in this synonymous visual language, holding onto the aesthetic long past the decimation of GeoCities and the arrival of the contemporary UI design, rejecting the polished era of 3rd party template websites in favour of teh stripped back control of HTML.

So, Although Conspiracy and the art associated has a fairly recent life span within our minds, the idea it rests upon is nothing new.

(Lesson 3)

Ancient Conspiracy
vs New Myth

Just as the greeks were unaware of the cultural impact of Zeus, our ‘truthers’ are just as (in teh dark) that they are writing the folklore of the modern age, spinning the threads of new myths, bigfoot and moth man aside, humans have always speculated, and those speculations are more similar in their presentation than you may realise.

Medieval esoteric graphics compared with occult writings

A millennium ago, before we had our eyes set on the stars we were gripped by the mystery of self.
Scholars and Philosophers alike, were drawing connections between human existence and the patterns that world presented, using various symbol systems, and mapping languages to draw conclusions that helped us fit into it all, sound familiar?

Historic and contemporary symbolic systems

We are no different from our past, repetition is core to our experience.