Faux Positif
u2p050
The installation Conspiracy Office of Faux Positif transforms visitors into conspiracy investigators within a fictional conspiracy investigation blending elements from Alternate Reality Games and Live Action Role-Playing to create immersive paranoid experiences. Through smartphone interactions, participants collaborate with an AI supervisor to generate personalized mystery narratives that unfold across the gallery space. This playful approach preserves conspiracy thinking's most engaging aspects—pattern recognition, collaborative investigation, narrative construction—while clearly framing them as fictional entertainment rather than genuine belief systems. Participants experience the psychological rewards of detective work and meaning-making without encountering harmful misinformation or real-world targets. The installation operates like a conspiracy-themed escape room that never ends.
Phone calls connect investigators with mysterious informants, screens display cryptic evidence throughout the space, radio transmissions broadcast encoded messages, while interactive puzzles require active interpretation. Each discovery spawns additional questions rather than definitive answers, mimicking how actual conspiracy thinking perpetually expands rather than resolves. This design reveals how thin the boundary separates playful investigation from genuine paranoid interpretation.
Many participants report genuine excitement and revelation while uncovering fictional mysteries, suggesting that conspiracy theorizing fulfills human desires for meaningful narrative engagement often absent from mainstream information environments. By gamifying paranoid cognition, the installation demonstrates conspiracy thinking's appeal without promoting harmful beliefs. Visitors experience firsthand how analogical pattern-recognition creates compelling explanatory frameworks, understanding both the cognitive pleasures and potential dangers of seeing hidden connections everywhere within our increasingly complex digital world.
Project Collaborators:
Avant Galerie Vossen - Paris
