Creative Cogitation

I can think of no bet­ter phrase to con­vey the para­noia that is encom­passed by con­spir­acy the­o­ries. The Grassy Knoll, Area 51, the NM UFO crash, 2012 End of Times (I think I might do a paint­ing about this too…), Illu­mi­nati, Free Masons, Skull & Bones, Knights Tem­plar, other secret soci­eties, the­o­ries about who really was behind 9/11, the­o­ries about what is really caus­ing global warm­ing, aliens, the­o­ries ancient civ­i­liza­tions that would make Erich von Däniken blush-the list of con­spir­a­cies goes on and on and I have not even begun to tap into this vein of Pop Cul­ture. Social Media pro­vides a new media-rich plat­form for the fringe to espouse their out­landish beliefs.

In this lat­est edi­tion to the Social Media Birds series, I take on one the­ory that has some basis in fact-the idea that the US States gov­ern­ment is spy­ing on ordi­nary cit­i­zens. Var­i­ous gov­ern­ments are using Sig­nal Intel­li­gence to search for ter­ror­ists and their plots, to track drug deal­ers, and for other polit­i­cal and diplo­matic intel­li­gence. Fringe the­o­rists also claim it is being used by gov­ern­ments, secret soci­eties, aliens or other secret coali­tions for large-scale com­mer­cial theft, eco­nomic espi­onage and of course gen­eral inva­sion of privacy.

Con­spir­acy The­ory, by Jake Beck­man. A men­ac­ing Amer­i­can bald eagles swoops out of cyber­space to snatch infor­ma­tion for a data stream.

The men­ac­ing Amer­i­can bald eagle is seem­ingly formed out of the noth­ing­ness of cyber­space to snatch at infor­ma­tion pass­ing through a data stream in the fore­ground.  The edge to edge binary reads, “Warn­ing: They know you’re read­ing this… Warn­ing:”. Sev­eral peo­ple have sug­gested I use some­thing other than a tweety bird in these paint­ings, so here one is.  This intim­i­dat­ing rap­tor is the very antithe­sis of my joy­ous canaries.

For more infor­ma­tion about Con­spir­acy The­ory, size etc., please visit its art page at AKAJake.com.

So what is your favorite conspiracy?

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

In this fourth install­ment of the Social Media Birds (work­ing title), I have bro­ken down the rigid lin­eal struc­ture of the binary and turned it into a kind of rib­bon shape. The canary flares for a land­ing car­ry­ing the bit of news; it fills the small can­vas so much that it over­flows it to some extent. I am also play­ing with the col­ors a bit, break­ing away from the blue and yel­low of the pre­ced­ing works.

“RSS Feed” by Jake Beck­man, an orange canary flares for a land­ing car­ry­ing a rib­bon of binary; it appears to be singing as it lands.

The ASCII binary reads “RSS Feed” from Lower Left to Upper Right, and Top to Bot­tom. In this ver­sion I explic­itly included a spi­ral in the back­ground as a line of con­flu­ence for other things in the paint­ing. What do you think? Which one do you like best so far?

Update: Details about RSS Feed, size etc., can be found on its art page at AKAJake.com

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.