Back from unexpected AFK. What’s a Gangnam?
— Jake Davis (@DoubleJake) June 21, 2013
Attention, Internet: Topiary, aka Jake Davis, the puckish Twitter user who was once the public face of LulzSec, is back.
He was the first Anonymous member to inspire the now-familiar worldwide “Free [___]” movement, a string of campaigns in support of the latest hapless hacker to fall afoul of law enforcement. He was adopted as a mascot and martyr by hacktivists around the world. Generally credited (thanks to his taking credit in interviews) with having hacked the Westboro Baptist Church website, he was a contradictory if intriguing figure, alternately hiding in the shadows and giving interviews in broad daylight.
When, finally in 2011, the police arrested a skinny 18-year-old from the remote Shetland Isles, there was a sense of incredulity: This was the fearless, witty, wily, and dangerous Topiary?
Davis’s trademark wraparound shades became something of a hacktivist icon over the next two years as he was initially released under heavy curfew and restrictions, almost immediately violating them by engaging in TinyChat with Barrett Brown, although it seemed nobody minded. Last month he was sentenced to two years in a juvenile facility, and is now free, having served a mere 37 days.
So, how has prison changed him?
You can arrest an idea, you can imprison an idea, you can warp an idea, you can break an idea, but you still can’t lick your own elbow.
— Jake Davis (@DoubleJake) June 23, 2013
Well, that answers that.
He’s back! Back online and back in school; he’s studying the very cuttingest of the edge of contemporary art at the Barbicon’s Arts School Lab. The prestigious arts institute says the program, which costs £200 per participant and is partly taxpayer-supported, explores the relationship between art and social change. “Arts School Lab requires an open mind because it explores the idea of ‘unlearning’ conventions and education through conversation and practical experiences.” In Davis’s case, that probably won’t take much unlearning. A Twitpic caught him and classmates just “hanging out” at Dalston House, an interactive illusion art installation in London.
Here we are chilling on Dalston House, considering our lives or possibly thinking about sandwiches. #ArtsSchoolLab pic.twitter.com/xo05BcKyj6
— Jake Davis (@DoubleJake) June 26, 2013
Looks perfectly at home.
It’s just possible that Twitter is his art form of choice. I mean, can you fuse a past as “a guest of Her Majesty’s” with humor and come up with this?
Prison showers are kind of like the Internet: lots of naked strangers talking about zombies.
— Jake Davis (@DoubleJake) June 27, 2013
654 days on curfew and 37 days in Feltham. Up next: another 365 days on license (parole) and 1825 days of intense monitoring. Free though!
— Jake Davis (@DoubleJake) June 22, 2013
Cheers for 1K followers — but to confirm, I don’t personally feel the restrictions placed upon me are unfair. Others have far worse.
— Jake Davis (@DoubleJake) June 24, 2013
Indeed. And some are (at least for now) doing better. Davis is clearly eager to catch up on what he missed, querying his followers “What’s a Carly Rae Jepson?” and asking perhaps the most pressing question of our time.
Why oh why didn’t #Snowden take the BLUE pill?
— Jake Davis (@DoubleJake) June 24, 2013
Photo via attani/deviantART
