Image: © Trevor Paglen, Symbology, Volume III (2009). Courtesy of the Artist, Altman Siegel, San Francisco and Pace Gallery.

Lecture Title: You’ve Been F$%^#D By PSYOPs: UFOs, Magic, Electronic Warfare, Mind Control, Artificial Intelligence, and the Death of the Internet

Lecture 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. In this talk, artist, filmmaker, and technologist Trevor Paglen explores a history of secret military and intelligence programs that serve as antecedents to a phantasmagoric present.

Trevor Paglen is an artist whose work spans image-making, sculpture, investigative journalism, writing, engineering, and various other disciplines. A 2017 MacArthur Fellow, Paglen’s work has had one-person exhibitions at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, and participated in group exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern, and various other venues. Paglen is the author of several books and numerous articles on subjects including experimental geography, artificial intelligence, state secrecy, military symbology, photography, and visuality. His work has been profiled in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, Wired, the Financial Times, Art Forum, and Aperture.

A reception in Milstein Hall Dome will follow the talk.

This lecture is co-organized by the Department of Art, with additional co-sponsorhip by Milstein Program in Technology & Humanity, University Lectureship Program, Society for the Humanities, and Media Studies Program.

In the leadup to this talk, Cornell Cinema will be screening Unseen Skies at the Cornell Cinema on Thursday, February 27, 7pm. For more info on this film screening: https://cinema.cornell.edu/unseen-skies