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CITRIS and BCNM Present: Trevor Paglen on Art, AI and Psyops

Close-up of a silver metallic sculpture of a humanoid face with round inset eyes and the top of a gaping mouth made of spiraling red wire. Prominent hooked teeth frame the top of the mouth.

Talk Title: You’ve Just Been F$%^#D by Psyops: UFOs, Magic, Electronic Warfare, Mind Control, Artificial Intelligence and the Death of the Internet

Speaker: Trevor Paglen, Multidisciplinary Artist, Filmmaker, Investigator and Technologist

Free and open to the public; no registration necessary.

Abstract: As AI-generated content, social media influence operations, microtargeted advertising and ubiquitous surveillance have become the norm on the internet and in the market in general, we have entered an era of PSYOP capitalism. This is an era of generated hallucinations and manipulations designed to transform each of us into a “targeted individual” through the manipulation of perception. This talk explores a history of secret military and intelligence programs that serve as antecedents to a phantasmagoric present.

Speaker Bio: Trevor Paglen (b. 1974) lives and works in New York, New York. As an artist, filmmaker, investigator, technologist and theorist, Paglen asks questions around vision, perception, materiality and aesthetics. His wide-ranging oeuvre includes work on artificial intelligence and computer vision, aerospace technology, secrecy and conspiracy, experimental landscapes, speculative fiction, nuclear histories, notional archaeology, psychological operations, and the Weird. Paglen has photographed secret military bases from enormous distances, tracked classified satellites and objects of unknown origin in earth orbit, led underwater tours of internet infrastructure, created a radioactive sculpture for a nuclear exclusion zone, profiled an Air Force disinformation specialist, built numerous AI and computer vision models, performed with the Kronos Quartet, written several books, and launched two sculptures into space, among other things. Ultimately, Paglen poses the following question: How can we learn to see the world at a moment in time where accelerating technologies, politics and cultures come up against the limits of reason and perception?

About the Talk: Presented as a part of the UC Berkeley Center for New Media’s Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium. Co-sponsored by CITRIS and the Banatao Institute.

Image courtesy of Trevor Paglen.