On December 12, 2018, the Central Intelligence Agency declassified an 8-page document on the history of the ‘psychological operations’ commonly known as psyops. Founded in 1953 by Dr. Stanley Gottlieb and then director of the CIA Allen Dulles, project MK-ULTRA responded to similar mind-over-matter initiatives brewing in the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea. In these terms, the CIA analogized the human brain as a programmable computer, one that generated a technological to philosophical to psychological system of reprogramming the mind. Before declassification, whispers of such a program circulated in uncertainty, often relegated to online chat forums, factions of conspiratorially ‘enlightened’ truthers, and those contrarians in favor of anti-consensus reality. Unearthing these records exposed the intellectual undercurrent of these midcentury intelligence agencies: institutions employing shadowy governmental agents transfixed by modernist literature, philosophy, and other lofty curricula popular within the Ivy League academy.
Robert Ruello’s Signal Spirits,” with “Fooling Al #1,” 2022, acrylic and Flashe on canvas, 84 x 60 x 1 1/2 inches
Signal Spirits, Inman Gallery’s latest show hosted by the TransArt Foundation for Art and Anthropology, exhibits a host of multimedia responses devoted to “exploring the unseen/unnoticed layers of both digital and physical realities,” says the artist, Robert Ruello. Ruello injects his visual practice with subtext, a process that infuses his art — whether in progress or completed — with “things like the illusion of transparency…” By foregrounding an image’s bitmap…the invisible background underlying all digital media…he lays bare the mechanics of transparency, where perception often misaligns reality. Much like the tension between dream and reality, transparency necessarily implies a buffer between observer and subject, a system where the sensorial reach-out-and-touch flips to reach-out-and-feel, where an imagined sensation triggers a stronger reaction in which the grass is always yet never greener.
Surpik Angelini, the owner and founder of the TransArt Foundation, “has a keen interest in anthropology…so she created TransArt with that in mind. The south gallery is more of a formal presentation of my work – and the north gallery is more about process,” says Ruello. Through a lens of conceptual process and material completion, Signal Spirits distills technological history into varying densities of innovation, underestimation, overappraisal, and snafu. Intent on cultivating the next Thomas Edison of spy technology, the United States intelligence apparatus of the Cold War era sought to innovate ingenious tools of James-Bond-level espionage. By exposing this bungled history, Ruello necessarily softens the swarms of anxious prophecies foreseeing a future of human submission gripped at the throat by technological dominance.
Installation view of Robert Ruello’s “Signal Spirits”
Ruello presents these recently declassified histories as works on paper. With backgrounds of copy paper white, they imbibe the warm-off-the-inkjet aura of a click-and-print image. Yearning in style for Web 1.0 (1989-2004), they reconstruct two distinct timelines. Conceptually grounded in a cautionary Cold War climate, but stylistically situated after the fall of the Berlin Wall, these works dissect layers of seriousness and disaffection. Drenched in sweaty suspicion, the US shivered at the
thought of a Soviet dominated world. In turn, it ignited an American climate of loyalty oaths, ideological rivalry, and “duck and cover” drills in schools. But when the collapse of the Berlin Wall softened a fear of mutually assured destruction and “safety first” caution, the 1990s emerged from the fallout shelter as the “slacker decade”, a period that forever cemented sayings like “selling out” and “trying too hard” as pejoratives.
Although these works on paper unconsciously simulate the pared-down style of that less is more era, they maintain cogent and historically minded heft.
Adjacent to but distinct from a “formal language”, Ruello’s bitmap-inspired glyphs offer “a point of reference for encrypted information: a transcribed, if incomplete, forgotten story.” The mechanics of its engagement recall interaction with a QR code. After prompting the viewer to consult the internet for more context, they naturally direct their audience to view these secret operations in contemporary terms.
Installation view of Robert Ruello’s “Signal Spirits”
Works on paper like Project A 119, Acoustic Kitty, and Bookmark: Operation Tacana visualize histories of tried and failed innovations. Devised by the US Air Force in 1958, Project A 119 intended to showcase American might over Soviet malice by detonating an atomic bomb on the moon. Instead, the US rerouted its resources to the 1969 moon landing. In Operation Acoustic Kitty, the CIA surgically implanted microphones into cats casting them as undercollar infiltrators of the Kremlin and other Soviet embassies. But after spending 20 million dollars on noncompliant cats, they abandoned the project. Take Bookmark: Operation Tacana as another example in which the CIA equipped pigeons with tiny cameras to function as biological surveillance drones.
While these operations might seem farfetched, given the perceived level of clear and present Cold War danger, preventing nuclear annihilation rattled an already anxious mind. Declassifying such snafus begged the unavoidable question: what descendants presently lurk in the shadows? And while covert operations undoubtedly still exist, legitimizing such operations has spawned a horde of truther vigilantes.
Intent on exposing the Machiavellian puppet master at the center of the worldwide stage, legitimate criticisms of these bad actors has demonized a culture in which questioning consensus reality in any role commits the secular sin of delusion, legitimate or otherwise. Spellbound by paranoid hyperbole, this conspiratorial cadre purports the resurgence of these top-secret Cold War operations but scales them to schizophrenic proportions. According to members of the far-right coalition QAnon (Q for short), “birds are fake.” In their world, pigeons — ahem…all birds in fact — roam the skies as artificial agents of avian surveillance. You might ask yourself: “Well golly…how on earth do these little rascals recharge?” The answer is simple: birds don’t merely rest on telephone wires, silly…they charge there, too.
Web 2.0 emerged in full during the dawning light of the early aughts. Despite the well-intentioned longing for community-building networks — a good-natured environment predicated on the back of Barack Obama’s 2008 “Hope” campaign — these networks thrived as “edgelord” chambers of conspiratorial fester. Critical of left-wing “echo chambers” like the mainstream media, extreme factions of right-wing trolls retreated into sightless caves of blinding black, where even the smallest bumps in the night were misperceived as evildoing left-wing commies. Oh. And don’t forget George Soros, the Clintons, and their covert cabal of blood-worshipping Satanists.
Installation shot of Robert Ruello’s “Signal Spirits” with “Fooling Al #1,” 2022, acrylic and Flashe on canvas, 84 x 60 x 1 1/2 inches and “Operation Tacana,” 2023, acrylic and Flashe on canvas,
84 x 60 x 1 1/2 inches
In contrast, the south gallery exhibits 4 large pieces formally displayed on stretched canvas, encompassing the works Fooling AI #1 (2022) and #2 (2022-24), a finished version of Operation Tacana (2023), and Dragonfly Spy (2023). If the works in this gallery represent formal presentations grounded as complete presentations, then they more closely align with the present state of the world as informed by the past. If their counterparts in the north gallery represent process — both physical and conceptual processes of becoming — then those sketch-like works probe the past to inform the present and future.
As much sleek and sterile steel pervades our visions of future aesthetics, such an Appleification begs the question: does the future indeed look futuristic? A la the cyberpunk aesthetic of The Matrix, Ruello predicts so. This question recalls the different ‘fallen world’ flavors depicted in media; Does the loom of dread and doom amplify or unravel those visions? Does the techno-feudalism of monopolies like Apple and Amazon prevail, thereby pacifying conflict and preserving this Appleification? Or do our most base human instincts succumb and plunge the world into a dystopian hellscape competing for ever-dwindling resources? Or perhaps another option: does artificial intelligence dethrone the likes of techno-feudal monarchs (a distant — or perhaps not-so-distant — Caesar character like Elon Musk) and enact something far worse? A fallen world where the machines usher in a permanent Reich of world domination. An ironic world akin to The Matrix in which the human race is confined to pod-like cells of energy.
Installation view of Robert Ruello’s “Signal Spirits”
To quote the first chapter of Mark Fisher’s paradigm-shattering text, Capitalist Realism, “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” In a world gripped by strife, decline, and intrigue…gazing into the hopeful horizon of the future might seem impossible. As resources decline and demands rise, ditching capitalism seems unlikely. As supplies and demands endlessly hurl toward zero sum convergence, how likely are the ultra-wealthy oligarchs of the world — the real world leaders — to redistribute the pie as their monetary resources dwindle as well? And given the ultimately uncertain possibility of AI to advocate creative solutions to curb this decline, perhaps Capitalist Realism needs a 2025 addendum. Maybe we need an appendix that flips the apocalyptic script…one that articulates technology’s ability to improve instead of corrupt human error. In this sense, Ruello offers glimmers of a troubled past as omens to disarm the final bomb. He also pokes fun at the idea of complete technological supremacy by offering mixed news…in which machines,
much like their creators, are prone to error…perhaps even operator error once they achieve an autonomous awareness. But maybe, as Rob Zombie growls in his Blade Runner inspired single, these friendly foes might just be “More Human Than Human.”
Signal Spirits is on view at TransArt Foundation for Art and Anthropology through January 25.
