Philosophy

A Reflection on Conspiracy Theories

Gianni Sarcone

The Tinfoil Hat Prank
Conspiracy theories have become a widespread phenomenon, as common in Russia as they are in the West. A recent incident in Russia’s Voronezh region exemplifies this trend, where teachers fell for a prank by Belarusian artist Vladislav Bokhan, who sent a fake memo instructing educators to wear tinfoil hats to shield themselves from NATO satellites. Photos of these teachers, wearing their homemade “protection,” quickly went viral, sparking both laughter and concern.

A Deeper Look at the Prank
Bokhan’s prank was more than a joke—it was a satire on the extremes some beliefs can reach. Pretending to be a government official, he gave detailed instructions for crafting what he called “Helmets of the Fatherland.” Some teachers, taking the memo seriously, followed the directions, highlighting how easily misinformation can find a foothold.

The Public Reacts
As these images spread online, reactions poured in. While many laughed, others were alarmed by the sight of educators buying into such an absurd directive. The prank underscores the ease with which misinformation can affect even those responsible for educating future generations.

A Widespread Phenomenon
Notably, this isn’t just a Russian issue—conspiracy theories thrive in the West too, where ideas about microchips in COVID vaccines, flat-earth theories, and chemtrails reveal a growing distrust of science and authority. Anti-Western sentiments, once rooted in ideologies like communism and fascism, have fueled a skepticism that now feeds conspiracy theories across Western societies. This event serves as a reminder of how, in an age marked by skepticism and division, certain narratives can take hold in surprising ways.

Suggestive Minimalism

Gianni Sarcone

Draw me a human with just two short, symmetrical curved lines…

In 2012, Lebanese artist Huguette Caland took part in the group show Le corps découvert at the ‘Institut du Monde Arabe’ in Paris. One of her works, Self Portrait (1973)—a petal-pink field humorously cracked by a darker pink, revealing an up-close rear view of a classical nude—was featured on the catalog cover. She also presented whimsical, playful line drawings of breasts, lashes, eyes, lips, noses—noses?—as though lifted from a secret, sensual notebook of an untroubled Shel Silverstein. A sign in the hall restricted entry to those over eighteen… Who knows why, for such innocent visual plays?

The Impossible Absence

Gianni Sarcone

In this naturalistic painting, there is no human being. And yet… Even when a painting appears to be empty of human presence, there is the inescapable human presence of the one who painted it.
Your gaze on the painting merges with the artist’s gaze. You see, through the emotions and the eyes of the one who spent hours studying this landscape. Art is a gift, it’s a “present”—the word is well chosen.
The artist becomes disembodied, transcending the physical, to offer you a front-row seat on the stage of his creation, where you’re invited to immerse yourself in his illusory representation of the world.

Painting by Guo Xi

The Mosaic of Equality

Gianni Sarcone

We are all equal, but not in the way we usually think. Imagine that we are made up of Legos, with each Lego representing a distinct experience, cultural background, or genetic component. Our entirety forms a colorful construction that reveals how we share certain Legos—in varying degrees—with others, shaping who we are. Indeed, we are “non-uniform units“, and it is in this mosaic that we find our equality.

mosaic corn

The Importance of Dots

Gianni Sarcone

It is often the little things that are the basis of progress… So let me tell you a little story about the tiniest thing on earth: the dot.

Thousands of years ago, a man in his solitude scanned the night sky and saw all those dots shining like so many still fireflies, and, perhaps for fun, he decided to join them together to form shapes. This is how zodiac signs and astronomy were born.

Far away, in ancient India, the dot symbolized beauty and the eye of knowledge. But even more, the dot they called “shunya-bindu” (शून्यबिन्दु) represented what we nowadays know as zero. It was first a placeholder and then a fully fledged number, for when it is added to the right of the representation of any given digit, the value of the digit is multiplied by ten. This is how our current numbers and decimal numeration system were born.

While drawing or painting, visual artists of all times used to fix a dot – or more specifically a point in space – which was traditionally visualized from the tip of their thumb. Eventually, when this point receded so far away in space, it became known as a “vanishing point”. A vanishing point is where all converging lines of a landscape meet at the horizon. This is how perspective and geometry were born.

One day, medieval musicians were tired of having to rely solely on their memories to remember songs. So they started to use dots, named “puncti”, placed on or between four lines to represent the pitch and duration of a sound. This is how musical notation and programming were born.

In the modern era, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, dots were used in many other symbolic forms: bumps, holes, single tones, flashes of light… Do the terms Braille, Morse, punched card, or pixel sound familiar to you? This is how communication and coding were born.

This is how the humble dot, often overlooked, has served as a fundamental building block for countless advancements throughout history. Never underestimate the power of small things; within a dot was the whole universe.

Bridget Riley, White Discs 2, 1964, emulsion on board, 41 × 39 inches (104 × 99 cm) © Bridget Riley 2021. All rights reserved.

(The text above has been used as foreword for the book “The All-Round Activity Book” available from Amazon)

Perceptual Nexus: A new philosophy of perception

Gianni Sarcone

Presenting a sneak peek of my upcoming philosophical book on perception.

In this exploration, I dissect the dynamic interplay between our “self,” the elusive “perception sphere,” and the external world. Operating independently, the perception sphere lacks self-awareness, creating a symbiotic relationship with the self, which, in turn, relies on the sphere for perceiving both itself and the external world.

Eager to discuss further with potential publishers.

Enlightening Exhibition

Gianni Sarcone

Per celebrare la luce è stato realizzato un percorso espositivo nell’Università di Firenze dedicato alle illusioni ottiche. La mostra, curata da un comitato scientifico, ospita anche molte delle mie opere.

To celebrate light, an exhibition’s itinerary was created at the University of Florence to explore the world of optical illusions. The exhibition, curated by a scientific committee, also hosts many works of mine.

Maggiori informazioni / More information

Subliminal Faces

Gianni Sarcone

This series of works questions the many cognitive aspects of faces’ recognition. People often see hidden faces in things, clouds, landscapes, or in architectural structures… Finding the latent or virtual image hidden in the manifest image is a mental process related to the concept of the “lost object” used in psychoanalysis. As an artist, I enjoy including subliminal messages or figures in my work. My paintings, photographs and collages play on the foreground and background relationship of our visual perception and represent common or iconic faces the viewer has to rediscover.

The Master of Numbers
Collage – mixed media, 2006

Photomosaic portrait of Albert Einstein made with random photographs of numbers.
It is only when the viewer moves away from the image that the portrait of Einstein appears. It is the distance that creates and unveils the truth, because everything is relative as Einstein once said and everything depends on the context, the environment or the point of view.

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Dalí’s Living Skull

Gianni Sarcone

Salvador Dalí : Sept corps nus et un crâne, 1951 (Human skull consisting of seven naked women).

Often symbols of MORTALITY (or some romantic notion of immortality – as the belief that a spiritual part of a person survives death) and POWER, skulls have been employed in human rituals and art since the dawn of humanity: from the ancient animal skulls in Paleolithic burial sites, to the curlicued cattle skulls that haunt Georgia O’Keeffe’s canvasses. Skulls cannot be assumed to be only a mere symbol of death, they are also used in initiation rituals as a symbol of REBIRTH, symbolizing the ‘sephirah daath’ (סְפִירָה – sephirah, “enumeration” in Hebrew) on the cabalistic tree of life, the gateway to a higher awareness only achievable through spiritual death and rebirth.

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