Real Eyes Realize Real Lies
My diploma project, developed during a period marked by the rapid rise of online conspiracy theories, served as a pre-COVID examination of their visual and psychological underpinnings. The work investigated the specific aesthetic language—culturally coded in low-resolution images, manipulated videos, and digital artifacts—that generates a climate of intrigue and paranoia.
Through a technique of found-footage collage, I deconstructed and re-contextualized existing media into a new narrative sequence. This method mirrored the very processes used by conspiracy communities to construct alternative truths, inviting the viewer to experience the unsettling sensation of information being simultaneously revealed and obscured.
Is paranoia a modern phenomenon, or has it always been with us? What causes it? Are there really shape -shifting reptilians living in among us?
2019