MK-Ultra is the an individual artist project dedicated to using art and music to effect changes it the mass consciousness of the human race. To fully understand it and its pop culture connotation you must first understand the history of mind control in western society.
Project MKULTRA (also known as MK-ULTRA) was the code name for a CIA mind control research program lasting from the 1950s through the 1970s. It was first brought to wide public attention by the U.S. Congress (in the form of the Church Committee) and a presidential commission (known as the Rockefeller Commission) and also to the U.S. Senate.
“The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over 30 universities and institutions were involved in an ‘extensive testing and experimentation’ program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens ‘at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign.’ Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to ‘unwitting subjects in social situations.’ At least one death, that of Dr. Olson, resulted from these activities.
The MK-Ultra project stands as a testament to the desire of power to hold ever more power. It speaks of the limitless depths to which men will go to accomplish their objectives, whatever those objectives might be. However, the MK-Ultra project is also an example as to how much thought and effort has been put into developing new and innovative ways at condoling the masses. Throughout history this primarily has been accomplished by the manipulation of information and/or physiological manipulation of the body politic by playing to fears and prejudices. As our society has become more advanced, empowered at every level imaginable so to has the level and sophistication of managing consensus by new and more fantastic means. Now instead of simply manipulating the information for the mind to ingest, now the mind itself and the way in which it processes this information is the target. Both in the public and private sectors a push has been in effect for the past century to understand and dissect the human psyche for the purpose of controlling it in mind. The end result of this research being the creation of a science which coupled with high technology has been used to dominates the minds of men.
The social engineer
Edward Bernays (November 22, 1891 – March 9, 1995) is regarded by many as the “father of public relations,” Bernays was both a blood nephew and a nephew-in-law to Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. Bernays pioneered the PR industry’s use of psychology and other social sciences to design its public persuasion campaigns.
“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it,” Bernays argued. He termed this – “engineering of consent.”
In Propaganda, his most important book, Bernays argued that the scientific manipulation of public opinion was necessary to overcome chaos and conflict in society:
_The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ... We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ... In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons … who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.
Man is a social animal, one that can be influenced and deceived by his sense perception. Because of this he is highly vulnerable to physiological attack if his inner mental mechanisms are understood. It is from this understanding that the rise of the current form of propaganda has come into being, the commercialized PR campaign._
Method of delivery
Once the science of how to organize the message was in place all that was necessary was the right mode of delivery. With that need the television was born. The perfect platform unto which socially program a society from birth. An electric syringe ready to inoculate the world against free will.
Television images appear via the projection of fluorescent light from 25,000 volt cathode-ray guns that shoot streams of electrons at phosphors (little metal dots) inside the screen, making them glow. This light is then projected from the screen into our eyes. While it appears that the flow of light is continuous, the phosphors actually light up 30 times per second, creating what is commonly known as the “flicker effect” (Mander, 1978).
It has since been demonstrated using electroencenograph (EEG) machines that the human brain effectively shuts down after a mere 30 seconds of television viewing (Moore, 2001), as it enters into what is called an alpha state, characterized by long slow brainwaves. The transition from beta state (associated with reading and active learning) to alpha (associated with dreaming, meditating and lack of mental activity) is caused by exposure to the artificial, flickering light of television. Healy (1990) explains that the frequency of electrical impulses emitted from the screen blocks active mental processing, thus inducing a kind of hypnotic trance in viewers. It is during this extremely susceptible state that huge quantities of information not thought about are streamed into the conscious mind.
In addition to shifts from the higher to the lower brain regions during television viewing, studies by Herbert Krugman have demonstrated that cerebral activity is centered in the right hemisphere of the brain (Moore, 2001). This crossover from the left brain (associated with the development of language, thinking and analyzing (Healy, 1990)), to right brain (associated with non-verbal communication) has the effect of “discourag[ing] development of ‘executive’ systems that regulate attention, organization, and motivation” (Healy, 1990). It also triggers the release of endorphins, the body’s natural opiates. So in fact the delivery system for the scientifically crafted propaganda we see today comes encapsulated in a state that not only bypasses the subjects conscious thinking defenses but at the same time addicts them to that stimulus.
Pause for a moment and consider the ramifications of that statement.
If you were told of a drug being used by an alien race.
A drug that not only has reduced the people of some otherworld to the state of mindless slaves but at the same time caused them to become addicted to its effects on the same order as heroin.
The end result of the combination of these two technological breakthroughs has been the creation of the most encompassing forms of mind control ever accomplished. A form of conditioning has been created that the subjects not only are respectable to but one that they actively pursue and enjoy. This has accomplished what all other systems of control in the history of mankind have not, that being; the active, willing, and eager participation of a population in enslaving/propagandizing itself. Perception is reality. By influencing the human mind and playing to its base desires the amount of control leveregable is unparallel to any other form of social control. It is through these subtle tools that entire cultures can and are reengineered to believe anything.
The matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to hide from you the truth.
The truth?
That you are a slave. Born into a prison that you can not feel or touch. A prison for your mind. – from the Matrix
In the western world today we are inundated from birth with one view of reality constantly propagandizing and socializing our behavior and perceptions. Any serious examination of television media programming today reveals very basic underlying themes of ego worship/cult of personality and materialism/self satisfaction/aggrandizement. The reality shows try to tell people what’s normal or socially acceptable. Shows such as American Idol, the Gotties, or Paris Hilton’s the simple life push cult of personality idol worship while supplying the masses with supposedly accepted archetypes of personality and value systems, while shows such as Law and Order or 24 push police state agendas as well as re-enforcing specific power structure mythos. The news (laughably called so today) shows endless hours of Michael Jackson or Scott Peterson that delivers the most myopic type of news coverage designed not to inform but entertain. These shows amount to the sum of mass conditioning. Social programming on a previously unimaginable scale. By repeating the same view of reality, over and over again the conscious mind accepts that view, it becomes incapable of understanding any other. This ultimately leads to identification with that paradigm itself. It is because of this reason that so many when confronted with alternate views will not only reject those views but become violent with any posing them. This is because when there world view is threatened the persons identity is in fact being threatened itself.
Whether by purposeful design or occurring solely out of the desire for maximizing commercial revenue the end result of this system is the same. A system of the produces a culture of self absorbed consumers.
To overcome such conditioning the same source of the conditioning must be applied to react against it. It is the most logical way to short circuit the programming that prevents critical thinking. Since the establishment has set the form and fashion of the delivery system the most productive way of resisting the system lies in turning its energy against it. Just as understanding the atomic structure of the universe has allowed us to manipulate that structure so to has the building blocks of language, sound and vision similarly been deconstructed, cut-up, and re-assembled for powerful effect. By understanding the nature of the mind control paradigm we face so to do we learn how to dissect it, and then reconstruct it for new meaning. IN the classic form of Asian martial arts you turn your opponents energy against them. In the tradition of sun Tzu you turn your enemy’s strengths against them.
Culture jamming, or sniggling, is the act of using existing mass media to comment on those very media themselves, using the original medium’s communication method. It is based on the idea that advertising is little more than propaganda for established interests, and that there is little escape from this propaganda in industrialized nations. Culture jamming’s intent differs from that of artistic appropriation (which is done for art’s sake) and vandalism (where destruction or defacement is the primary goal), although its results are not always so easily distinguishable.
The phrase “culture jamming” comes from the idea of radio jamming: that public frequencies can be pirated and subverted for independent communication, or to disrupt dominant frequencies. The Situationist International first made the comparison to radio jamming in 1968, when it proposed the use of guerrilla communication within mass media to sow confusion within the dominant culture. (Kalle Lasn, the founder of AdBusters magazine, wrote a book entitled Culture Jam, but the term predates his title.)
Culture jamming is a form of activism and a resistance movement to the perceived hegemony of popular culture, based on the ideas of “guerrilla communication” and the “detournement” of popular icons and ideas. It has roots in the German concept of spass guerilla and in the Situationist International. Forms of culture jamming include adbusting, performance art, graffiti, and hacktivism (such as cybersquatting).
Although less known by the mainstream, the word VJ is used to represent video performance artists who create live visuals to music. It originates from a parallel with DJs, although most VJs nowadays have more to do with musicians than with DJs. Often using an digital video mixer, VJs blend and superimpose various inputs over clips.
This new incarnation MK-Ultra project then is the hybrid of these two art forms. It is the fusion of culture jamming with vj’ing to produce the new art form of live, real time multi media manipulation for the purpose of sending out en mass anti-propaganda propaganda. The science of this project rests on the time proven techniques developed over the last century by intelligence agencies and corporations. It will confront the message of these power structures from a libertarian non-left vs. right approach seeking to uncover the corrupting nature of power while covering and confronting issues ignored or marginalized by the current mainstream status quo media machine construct.
Humanity now stands at a crossroads concerning its future development. With the increasing scale of technological developments what was once only imaginable is now becoming commonplace. What once took the work of a hundred can now be accomplished with a few, where it once cost the sum of thousands of dollars to deliver a message can now be accomplished with hundreds. Without intelligent, rational discourse on the issues of the day represented outside of political objectives or prejudice a healthy future for the species will not manifest. The Mk-Ultra project seeks to join itself with the growing awakening occurring in humanity in relation to these social questions surrounding the current status of the human condition and its future. It will accomplish this by creating a presence and platform within the media sphere that is the digital marketplace of ideas then using that powerful medium to begin to effect changes in human perceptions.
Mk-Ultra – re-programming reality….one mind at a time.
Bart black
At www.mkultra.tv