It's an astounding sight: Buddha carved into a tall rock formation at the Ngyen Khag Taktsang Monastery in China. People talked breathlessly about how they visited the place, saw it with their own eyes. Except that they didn't. Because it's a fake. And this is the guy who faked it.
The creator of this photoshopped landscape goes by the handle Archistophanes on Twitter, and prefers to remain anonymous. He's part of an art collective known as Reality Cues, whose Graffiti Lab
project plays with landscape and architecture, conjuring images that
exist only in the mind and on their computers. I talked with him
recently about what it's like to see one of your fakes go viral, to
watch the internet treat your manipulated images as fact.
"I
started to play with search entries: what was popular on Tumblr, or
what images come up first on a Google image search," he explained,
describing how he got the idea for the monastery in the first place. The
undoctored image was floating around under the hashtag #landscape.
"Monumental architecture or sculptures are also hugely popular
so I glued two together."
But
despite the original landscape image's popularity, the new image that
he had created started to pop up much more often. Which was part of the
point.
"What
interests me is how often someone can see an image and not realize that
some change has transpired," Archistophanes said. "At some point the
original has been swapped out and a new 'improved' version is in its
place."
Two more readily apparent Archistophanes creations.
I
asked if any of his other clearly photoshopped creations had gone
viral. This, of course, was a stupid question. One person's obvious fake
is another person's proof that the world truly is a beautiful and
magical place.
"I like that you say 'clearly photoshopped'
because to me they are all clearly photoshopped," he said. One creation called Long Forgotten Temple of Lysistrata (above left) was another viral hit. Even the Han Solo in carbonite stuck in a Frank Gehry building (above right) has been passed around on Tumblr as real.
One
of the things that most amazes people who unknowingly pass along the
doctored monastery photo as real, Archistophanes noted, is how difficult
it would be to actually build something like that. It seems to instill a
sense of hope, aside from simple awe.
"People
defend it against accusations of Photoshop," Archistophanes said. It's
clear that the manipulated photo inspires people who are looking for
that particular brand of inspiration in their daily lives.
"Someone
was defending that it could physically be built," he said. "[The person
defending the authenticity of the monastery image] said something like:
people can do great things when they get together to accomplish goals."
That
seems to be why these images go viral; why they're passed around like
the internet's native currency. With all the shittiness, outrage, and
despair in the world, we want to believe that humanity can still achieve
great things—that building something beautiful is not outside of our
reach.
Which
in turn means that as long as there are people like Archistophanes in
the world, whether their intent is virality or just art, there will be
plenty of fake images to believe in for years to come.
http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/inside-the-fakes-factory-my-chat-with-a-viral-image-cr-1505790523
Images: Buddha at Ngyen Khag Taktsang Monastery by Reality Cues; Long Forgotten Temple of Lysistrata by Reality Cues; Frank Gehry Strikes Back: Carbonite Tower by Reality Cues
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