AI Art from Declassified CIA Documents about the MKULTRA Program

I've just finished one of my weirdest art projects. It started with images of declassified CIA documents about the MKULTRA Program. There are approximately 20k documents pertaining to this program available, but my particular focus was material concerning mind control research. So I selected 15 document images from this WantToKnow.info page, combined these images with transcript excerpts, and used an AI to create original art. Then I made this into a Tezos NFT collection titled Artifacts of Mind Control.

Above is an example of the art that resulted. You can check out the rest here on Objkt. Only three NFTs of each image were minted, and I don't plan to price them for sale. Anyone can of course make an offer, technically. Each NFT contains a link in its description to the source document used. You can view the webpage with all of these source documents here.

In each item description, a government document identification number, called a MORI ID, was included. What I deliberately didn't include were document dates. MKULTRA took place during the 1950s and 1960s, in the context of the Cold War. Any interested party can examine a source document and see the date on it. Yet I wanted the art to have a timeless quality, focusing more on the program that gave rise to these documents than on the fact that this particular program took place a long time ago.

MKULTRA is famous in pop culture for all of the drugs it fed people, oftentimes without their informed consent. Although the documents I selected for this project make mention of this, the most powerful stuff, in my opinion, describes the CIA's use of hypnosis for the purpose of securing sex and programming assassins. Rationally, I don't want to believe such things are even possible. According to this material, they've been possible for several decades.

This raises uncomfortable questions about how mind control technology might have advanced in the interim. My sense is that it has advanced significantly. What we know about is likely just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this technology.

Artifacts of Mind Control is my third major NFT project this year. Like the other two, I'd been thinking about doing it for a long time before getting started. When the crypto markets crashed, I saw it as the perfect opportunity to step back from writing for the industry to complete this work. Most of my contacts in the industry have not been supportive of these personal projects.

Overall, I'm thrilled with how Artifacts of Mind Control turned out. The art appears almost alien, like a trove of extraterrestrial paperwork taken from a UFO, with vaguely psychedelic qualities. It would look great blown up as poster size prints. Maybe I'll do a show at some point.

Read my novels:

• Small Gods of Time Travel is available as a web book on IPFS.
• The Paradise Anomaly is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• Psychic Avalanche is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• One Man Embassy is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• Flying Saucer Shenanigans is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• Rainbow Lullaby is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• The Ostermann Method is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• Blue Dragon Mississippi is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.

See my NFTs:

• Small Gods of Time Travel is a 41 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt that goes with my book by the same name.
• History and the Machine is a 20 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on my series of oil paintings of interesting people from history.
• Artifacts of Mind Control is a 15 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on declassified CIA documents from the MKULTRA program.