Underwater Pyramid. Numbered and signed on reverse of print. High-quality stochastic print on 100 lb, low-acid, uncoated paper with archival ink. Ships rolled. Frame not included. Read about finding a frame before choosing a size.
The Story
When it comes to UFOs and alien hunting, it’s no wonder that the ocean depths can be as rife a place of possibility as the vast blue sky overhead. At its deepest part, the ocean can cover Mount Everest with 7,000 feet to spare, so anyone can imagine that much bigger things can be hidden there than anywhere in the skies overhead. From lost ancient cities like Atlantis, to alien and military operating bases, the ocean blue has been suspected of concealing it all.
One of the most romantic images of underwater mystery is the idea of the underwater pyramid. Given how much scholarship and tourism Earth’s terrestrial pyramids attract, it’s exciting to imagine the implications of finding any such structures thousands of feet below water.
A number of internet rumours promoted the discovery of alleged underwater pyramids in recent years. Notably, a fictitious Dr Meyer Verlag was said to have discovered a massive glass or crystal underwater pyramid in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle. In another episode, which is taken slightly more seriously, a YouTube user claims to be able to see a pair of underwater pyramids in Google Earth photographs off the coast of Florida.
The best claim comes from offshore engineer Paulina Zelitsky, who in 2001 discovered via sonar imaging what appeared to be an underwater pyramid complex off the coast of Cuba. After garnering serious attention from press–which ran headlines about the potential discovery of Atlantis–and the interest of National Geographic, a planned return expedition never happened and the story went cold.
Archaeologist Graham Hancock has penned several voluminous books including his exhaustive Fingerprints of the Gods, in which he argues the case for the presence in our distant past of a technologically-advanced human civilization spread out across the globe. So-called new-age archaeologists such as himself believe that the facts point to a human history that would upend our current understanding, supporting fantastic ideas of Atlantean type civilizations and a post-diluvian archetypal fall of humankind.
Accepted science and history continues to reject any such hypotheses, criticizing their proponents as reckless wishful thinkers. While it’s true that the “I want to believe” mentality has produced its fair share of passion-blind tinfoil hat experts desperately trying to escape the world of the mundane, Hancock and a collection of others resist that categorization. There is a minority of academics trained in the same traditions as their detractors who stumbled into the field of “esoteric study” and didn’t shy away.
To Boldly Go…
In his work, historian Richard Dolan, author of UFOs and the National Security State: Chronology of a Coverup: 1941-1973 and its follow-up, UFOs and the National Security State: The Coverup Exposed: 1973-1991, tackles the issue of UFO secrecy and how it’s been functionally possible for a small group of individuals to cover up such an enormous secret for so long. In a lecture series titled “The Secret Space Program and the Breakaway Civilization,” he coins what he calls “the secrecy iceberg,” a metaphor for the classification structure of government documents that has kept critical information out of the hands of historians such as himself. Below the line of visibility lurks an ever-deepening classification structure bottoming out four levels deeper than Top Secret at documents classified ACCM (Alternative or Compensatory Control Measures), meaning their content is secretive to a level beyond the deepest secrecy classifications available.
Underwater Pyramid: The Artwork
Dolan’s iceberg analogy for secrecy classifications makes you wonder just how small a fraction of reality is represented in the world we know. Is there a vast world of knowledge just below our feet that we wouldn’t be able to begin to imagine? In Subsurface, the contrast between what is seen and what is concealed is the difference between two inverted worlds. One dip below the waterline reveals a space totally alien to the one above. It’s a visual metaphor for secrecy and the possibilities concealed by it.
Subsurface works particularly well in open, light, and modern interiors because of its cool and ethereal atmosphere. Accents of gold in the room would pull out the pyramid”s mysterious sub-ocean glow and draw viewers into the piece’s aura of mystery. This is a piece for a homeowner with a taste in geometry, balance, calmness, and above all else fantasy.
