| textz on 5 Jan 2001 19:42:27 -0000 |
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| [rohrpost] William S. Burroughs: The Electronic Revolution [2/3] |
The underground press serves as the only effective counter to a
growing power and more sophisticated technique used by
establishment mass media to falsify, misrepresent, misquote,
rule out of consideration as a PRIORI ridiculous or simply
ignore and blot out of existence: data, books, discoveries that
they consider prejudicial to establishment interest.
I suggest that the underground press could perform this function
much more effectively by the use of cut/up techniques. For
example, prepare cut/ups of the ugliest reactionary statements
you can find and surround them with the ugliest pictures. Now
give it the drool, slobber, animal noise treatment and put it
out on the mutter line with recorders. Run a scramble page in
every issue of a transcribed tape recorded cut/up of news, radio
and TV. Put the recordings out on the mutter line before the
paper hits the stand. It gives you a funny feeling to see a
headline that's been going round and round inside your head. The
underground press could add a mutter line to their adverts and
provide a unique advertising service. Cut the product in with
pop tunes, cut the product in with advertising slogans and
jingles of other products and syphon off the sales. Anybody that
doubts that these techniques work has only to put them to the
test. The techniques here described are in use by the CIA and
agents of other countries ...Ten years ago they were making
systematic street recordings in every district of Paris. I
recall the Voice of America man in Tangir and a room full of
tape recorders and you could hear some strange sounds through
the wall. Kept to himself, hello in the hall. Nobody was ever
allowed in that room, not even a fatima. Of course, there are
many technical elaborations like long-range directional mikes.
When cutting the prayer call in with hog grunts it doesn't pay
to be walking around the market place with a portable tape
recorder.
An article in NEW SCIENTIST June 4, 1970, page 470, entitled '
Electronic Arts of Noncommunication ' by Richard C French gives
the clue for more precise technical instructions.
In 1968, with the help of Ian Sommerville and Anthony Balch, I
took a short passage of my recorded voice and cut it into
intervals of one twenty - fourth of a second movie tape (movie
tape is larger and easier to splice)- and rearranged the order
of the 24th second intervals of recorded speech. The original
words are quite unintelligible but new words emerge. The voice
is still there and you can immediately recognise the speaker.
Also the tone of the voice remains. If the tone is friendly,
hostile, sexual, poetic, sarcastic lifeless, despairing, this
will be apparent in the altered sequence.
I did not realise at the time that I was using a technique that
has been in existence since 1881 ...I quote from Mr. French's
article ... "designs for speech scramblers go back to 1881 and
the desire to make telephone and radio communications
unintelligible to third parties has been with us ever since"...
The message is scrambled in transmission and then unscrambled at
the other end. There are many of these speech scrambling devices
that work on different principles... "another device which saw
service during the war was the time division scrambler. The
signal was chopped up into elements .005 cm long. These elements
are taken in groups or frames and rearranged in a new sequence.
Imagine that the speech recorded is recorded on magnetic tape
which is cut into pieces .02 long and the pieces rearranged into
a new sequence. This can actually be done and gives a good idea
what speech sounds like when scrambled in this way."
This I had done in 1968. And this is an extension of the cut/up
method. The simplest cut/up cuts a page down the middle and
across the middle into four sections. Section 1 is then placed
with section 4 and section 3 with section 2 in a new sequence.
Carried further we can break the page down into smaller and
smaller units in altered sequences.
The original purpose of scrambling devices was to make the
message unintelligible without scrambling the code. Another use
for speech scramblers could be to impose thought control on a
mass scale. consider the Human body and nervous system as
unscrambling devices. A common virus like the cold sore could
sensitize the subject to unscramble messages. Drugs like LSD and
Dim-N could also act as unscrambling devices. Moreover, the mass
media could sensitize millions of people to receive scrambled
versions of the same set of data. Remember that when the human
nervous system unscrambles a scrambled message this will seem to
the subject like his very own ideas which just occurred to him,
which indeed it did.
Take a card, any card. In most cases he will not suspect its
extraneous origin. that is the run of the mill newspaper reader
who receives the scrambled message uncritically and assumes that
it reflects his own opinions independently arrived at. On the
other other hand, the subject may recognise or suspect the
extraneous origins of voices that are literally hatching out in
his head. Then we have a classic syndrome of paranoid psychosis.
Subject hears voices. Anyone can be made to hear voices with
scrambling techniques. It is not difficult to expose him to the
actual scrambled message, any part of which can be made
intelligible. This can be done with street recorders, recorders
in cars, doctored radio and TV sets. In his own flat if
possible, if not in some bar or restaurant he frequents. If he
doesn't talk to himself, he soon will do. You bug his flat. Now
he is really round the bend hearing his own voice out of radio
and TV broadcasts and the conversation of passing strangers. See
how easy it is? Remember the scrambled message is partially
unintelligible and in any case he gets the tone. Hostile white
voices unscrambled by a Negro will also activate by association
every occasion on which he has been threatened or humiliated by
whites. To carry it further you can use recordings of voices
known to him. You can turn him against his friends by hostile
scrambled messages in a friend's voice. This will activate ll
his disagreements with that friend. You can condition him to
like his enemies by friendly scrambled messages in enemy voices.
On the other hand the voices can be friendly and reassuring. He
is now working for the CIA, the GPU, or whatever, and these are
his orders. They now have an agent who has no information to
give away and who doesn't have to be paid. and he is now
completely under control. If he doesn't obey orders they can
give him the hostile voice treatment. No, "They" are not God or
super technicians from outer space. Just technicians operating
with well-known equipment and using techniques that can be
duplicated by anyone else who can buy and operate this
equipment.
To see how scrambling technique could work on a a mass scale,
imagine that a news magazine like TIME got out a whole issue a
week before publication and filled it with news based on
predictions following a certain line, without attempting the
impossible, giving our boys a boost in every story and the
Commies as many defeats and casualties as possible, a whole new
issue of TIME formed from slanted prediction of future news. Now
imagine this scrambled out through the mass media.
With minimal equipment you can do the same thing on a smaller
scale. You need a scrambling device, TV, radio, two video
cameras, a ham radio station and a simple photo studio with a
few props and actors. For a start you scramble the news all
together and spit it out every which way on ham radio and street
recorders. You construct fake news broadcasts on video camera.
For the pictures you can use mostly old footage. Mexico City
will do for a riot in Saigon Chile you can use the Londonderry
pictures. Nobody knows the difference. Fires, earthquakes, plane
crashes can be moved around. for example, here is a plane crash
in Toronto 108 dead. so move the picture of the Barcelona plane
crash over to Toronto and Toronto to Barcelona. And you scramble
your fabricated news in with actual news broadcasts.
You have an advantage which your opposing player does not have.
He must conceal his manipulations. You are under no such
necessity. In fact you can advertise the fact that you are
writing the news in advance and trying to make it happen by
techniques which anybody can use. And that makes you NEWS. And
TV personality as well, if you play it right. You want the
widest possible circulation for your cut/up video tapes. Cut/up
techniques could swamp the mass media with total illusion.
Fictional dailies retroactively cancelled the San Francisco
earthquake and Halifax explosion as journalistic hoaxes, and
doubt released from the skin law extendable and revenous,
consumed all the facts of history.
Mr French concludes his article ..."The use of modern
microelectric integrated circits could lower the cost of speech
scramblers enough to see them in use by private citizens. Codes
and ciphers have always had a strong appeal to most people and I
think scramblers will as well..."
It is generally assumed that speech must be consciously
understood to cause an effect. Early experiments with subliminal
images have shown that this is not true. A number of research
projects could be based on speech scramblers. We have all seen
the experiment where someone hears his own recorded voice back a
few seconds later. Soon he cannot go on talking. Would scrambled
speech have the same effect? to what extent does a language act
as unscrambling in either-or conflict terms? To what extent does
the tone of voice used by a speaker impose a certain
unscrambling sequence on the listener?
Many of the cut/up tapes would be entertaining and in fact
entertainment is the most promising field for cut/up techniques.
Imagine a pop festival like Phun City scheduled for July 24th,
25th, 26, 1970 at Ecclesden Common, Patching, near Worthing,
Sussex. Festival area comprised of car park and camping area, a
rock auditorium, a village with booths and cinema, a large
wooded area. A number of Tape recorders planted in the woods and
the village. As many as possible so as to lay down a grid of
sound over the whole festival. Recorders have tapes of
prerecorded material, music, news, broadcasts, recordings from
other festivals, etc. At all times some of the recorders are
playing back and some are recording. The recorders recording the
crowd and the other tape recorders that are playing back at
varying distances. This cuts in the crowd who will be hearing
their own voices back. Play back, wind back and record could be
electronicly controlled with varying intervals. Or they could be
hand operated, the operator deciding what intervals of play
back, record, and wind to use. Effect is greatly increased by a
large number of festival goers with portable recorders playing
back and recording as they walk around the festival. We can
carry it further with projection screens and video cameras. Some
of the material is pre-prepared, sex films, films of other
festivals, and this material is cut in with live TV broadcasts
and shots of the crowd. Of course, the rock festival will be cut
in on the screens, thousands of fans portable recorders
recording, and playing back, the singer could direct play back
und record. Set up an area for travelling performers, jugglers,
animal acts, snake charmers, singers, musicians, and cut these
acts in. Film and tape from the festival, edited for best
material, could then be used at other festivals.
Quite a lot of equipment and engineering to set it up. the
festival could certainly be enhanced if as many festival goers
as possible bring portable tape recorders and play back at the
festival.
Any message, music, conversation you want to pass around, bring
it pre-recorded on tape so everybody takes a piece of your tape
home.
Research project: to find out to what extent scrambled messages
are unscrambled, that is scanned out by experimental subjects.
The simplest experiments consists in playing back a scrambled
message to subject. Message could contain simple commands. Does
the scrambled message have any command value comparable to post-
hypnotic suggestion? Is the actual content of the message
received? What drugs, if any, increase ability to unscramble
messages? Do subjects vary widely in this ability? Are scrambled
messages in the subject's own voice more effective than messages
in other voices? Are messages scrambled in certain voices more
easily unscrambled by specific subjects? Is the message more
potent with both word and image scramble on video tape? Now to
use, for example, a video tape message with a unified emotional
content. Let us say the message is fear. For this we take all
the past fear shots of the subject we can collect or evoke. We
cut these in with fear words and pictures, and threats, etc.
This is all acted out and would be upsetting in any case. Now
let's try it scrambled and see if we can get an even stronger
effect. The subject's blood pressure, rate of heart beat, and
brain waves are recorded as we play back the scrambled tape.
His face is photographed and visible to him on video screen at
all times. the actual scrambling of the tape can be done in two
ways. It can be a completely random operation like pulling
pieces out of a hat and if this is done several consecutive
units may occur together yielding an identifiable picture of
intelligible word. Both methods of course can be used at varying
intervals. Blood pressure, heart beat, and brainwave recordings
will show the operator what material is producing the strongest
reaction, and he will of course zero in. And remember that the
subject can see his face at all times and his face is being
photographed. As the Peeping Tom said, the most frightening
thing is fear in your own face. If the subject becomes too
disturbed we have peace and safety tapes ready.
Now here is a sex tape: This consists of a sex scene acted out
by the ideal sexual object of the subject and his ideal self
image. Shown straight it might be exciting enough, now scramble
it. It makes a few seconds for scrambled tapes to hatch out, and
then? can scrambled sex tapes zeroing in on the subject's
reactions and brain waves result in spontaneous orgasm? Can this
be extended to other functions of the body? A mike secreted in
the water closet and all his shits and farts recorded and
scrambled in with stern nanny voices commanding him to shit, and
the young liberal shits his pants on the platform right under
Old Glory. Could laugh tapes, sneeze tapes, hiccough tapes,
cough tapes, give rise to laughing sneezing, hiccoughing, and
coughing?
To what extent extent can physical illness be induced by
scrambled tapes? Take for example, a sound and color picture of
a subject with a cold. Later, when the subject is fully
recovered, we take color and sound film of recovered subject. We
now scrambled the cold pictures and sound track in with present
pictures on present pictures. We also project the cold pictures
on present pictures. Now we try using some of Mr. Hubbard's
reactive mind phrases which are supposed in themselves to
produce illness. To be me, to be you, to stay here, to stay
there, to be a body, to be bodies, to stay present, to stay
past. now we scramble this in together and show it to the
subject. Could seeing and hearing this sound and image track,
scrambled down to very small units, bring about an attack of
cold virus? Is such a cold tape does actually produce an attack
of cold virus, perhaps we have merely activated a latent virus.
Many viruses, as you know, are latent in the body and may be
activated. We can try the same with coldsore, with hepatitis,
always remembering that we may be activating a latent virus and
in no sense creating a laboratory virus. However, we may be in a
position to do this. Is a virus perhaps simply very small units
of sound and image? Remember the only image a virus has is the
image and sound track it can impose on you. The yellow eyes of
jaundice, the postules of smallpox, etc. imposed on you against
your will. The same is certainly true of scrambled word and
image it can make you unscramble. Take a card, any card. This
does not mean that it is actually a virus. Perhaps to construct
a laboratory virus we would need both camera and sound crew and
a biochemist as well. I quote from the INTERNATIONAL PARIS
TRIBUNE an article on the synthetic gene: "Dr. Har Johrd Khorana
has made a gene-synthetic."
"It is the beginning of the end," this was the immediate
reaction to this news from the science attache' at one of
Washington's major embassies. "If you can make genes you can
eventually make new viruses for which there are no cures. any
little country with good biochemists could make such biological
weapons. It would take only a small laboratory. If it can be
done, somebody will do it. "For example, a death virus could be
created that carries the coded message of death. A death tape,
in fact. No doubt the technical details are complex and perhaps
a team of sound and camera men working with biochemists would
give us the answer.
And now the question as to whether scrambling techniques could
be used to spread helpful and pleasant messages. Perhaps. On the
other hand, the scrambled words and tape act like a virus in
that they force something on the subject against his will. More
to the point would be to discover how the old scanning patterns
could be altered so that subject liberates his own spontaneous
scanning pattern.
NEW SCIENTIST 2 July, 1970 ...Current memory theory posits a
seven second temporary "buffer store" preceding the main one: a
blow on the head wipes out memory of this much prior time
because it erases the contents of the buffer. Daedalus observes
that the sense of the present also covers just this range and so
suggests that our sensory input is recorded on an endless time
loop, providing some seven seconds of delay for scanning before
erasure. In this time the brain edits, makes sense of, and
selects storage key features. The weird DEJA VU sensation "now"
has happened before is clearly due to brief erasure failure, so
that we encounter already stored memory data coming round again.
Time dragging or racing must reflect tape speed. A simple
experiment will demonstrate this erasure process in operation.
Making street recordings and playing them back, you will hear
things you do not remember, sometimes said in a loud clear
voice, must have been quite close to you, nor do you necessarily
remember them when you hear the recording back. The sound has
bee erased according to a scanning pattern which is automatic.
This means that what you notice and store as memory as you walk
down the street is scanned out of a much larger selection of
data which is then erased from the memory. For the walker the
signs he passed, people he has passed, are erased from his mind
and cease to exist for him. Now to make this scanning process
conscious and controllable, try this:
Walk down a city block with a camera and take what you notice,
moving the camera around as closely as possible to follow the
direction of your eyes. The point is to make the the camera your
eyes and take what your eyes are scanning out of the larger
picture. At the same time take the street at a wide angle from a
series of still positions. The street of the operator is, of
course, the street as seen by the operator. It is different from
the street seen at a wide angle. Much of it is in fact missing.
Now you can make arbitrary scanning patterns - that is cover
first one side of the street and then the other in accordance
with a preconceived plan. So you are breaking down the automatic
scanning patterns. You could also make colour scanning patterns,
that is, scan out green, blue, red, etc. in so far as you can
with your camera. That is, you are using an arbitrary
preconceived scanning pattern, in order to break down automatic
scanning patterns. a number of operators do this and then
scramble their takes together and with wide angle tapes. This
could train the subject to see at a wider angle and also to
ignore and erase at will.
Now all this is readily subject to experimental verification on
control subjects. Nor need the equipment be all on control
subjects. Nor need the equipment be all that complicated. I have
shown how it could work with feedback from brainwaves and
visaaceral response and video tape photos of subject taken while
he is seeing and hearing the tape, simply to show optimum
effectiveness.
You can start with two tape recorders. The simplest scrambling
device is scissors and splicing equipment. You can start
scrambling words, make any kind of tapes and scramble them and
observe the effects on friends and on yourself. Next step is
sound film and then video camera. Of course results from
individual experiments could lead to mass experiments, mass fear
tapes, riot tapes, etc. The possibilities here for research and
experiment are virtually unlimited and I have simply made a few
very simple suggestions
"A virus is characterized and limited by obligate cellular
parasitism. All viruses must parasite living cells for their
replication. For all viruses the infection cycle comprises entry
into the host, intracellular replication, and escape from the
body of the host to initiate a new cycle in a fresh host." I am
quoting here from MECHANISMS OF VIRUS INFECTION edited by Dr.
Wilson Smith. In its wild state the virus has not proved to be a
very adaptable organism. Some viruses have burned themselves
have burned out since they were 100 per cent fatal and there
were no reservoirs. Each strain of virus is rigidly programed
for certain attack on certain tissues. If the attack fails, the
virus does not gain a new host. There are, of course, virus
mutations, and the influenza virus has proved quite versatile in
this way.Generally it's the simple repitition of the same method
of entry, and if that method is blocked by any body or other
agency such as interferon, the attack fails. By and large, our
virus is a stupid organism. Now we can think for the virus,
devise a number of alternate methods of entry. For example, the
host is simutaneously attacked by an ally virus who tells him
that everything is allright and by a pain and fear virus. so the
virus is now using an old method of entry, namely, the tough cop
and the con cop.
We have considered the possibility that a virus can be activated
or even created by very small units of sound and image. So
concieved, the virus can be made to order in the laboratory. Ah,
but for the takes to be effective, you must have also the actual
virus and what is the actual virus? New viruses turn up from
time to time but from where do they turn up? Well, lets see how
we could make a virus turn up. We plot now our virus's symptoms
and make a scramble tape. The susceptible subjects, that is
those who reproduce some of the desired symptoms, will then be
scrambled into more tapes till we scramble our virus into
existence. This birth of a virus occurs when our virus is able
to reproduce itself in a host and pass itself on to another
host. Perhaps, too, with the virus under laboratory control it
can be tamed for useful purposes. Imagine, for example a sex
virus. it so inflames the sex centres in the back brain that the
host is driven mad from sexuality, all other considerations are
blacked out Parks full of naked, frenzied people, shitting,
pissing, ejaculating, and screaming. So the virus could be
malignant, blacking out all regulation and end in exhaustion,
convulsions, and death.
Now let us attempt the same thing with tape. We organize a sex-
tape festival. We organise a sex-tape festival. 100,000 people
bring their scrambled sex tapes, and video tapes as well, to
scramble in together. Projected on vast screens, muttering out
over the crowd, sometimes it slows down, so that you see a few
seconds, then scrambled again, then slow down, scramble. Soon it
will scramble them all naked. The cops and the National Guard
are stripping down. LET'S GET OURSELVES SOME CIVVIES. Now a
thing like that could be messy, but those who survive it recover
from the madness. Or, say, a small select group of really like-
minded people get together with their sex tapes, you see the
process is now being brought under control. And the fact that
anybody can do it is in itself a limiting factor.
Here is Mr. Hart, who wants to infect everyone with his own
image and turn them all into himself, so he scrambles himself
and dumps himself out in search of worthy vessels. If nobody
else knows about scrambling techniques he might scramble himself
quite a stable of replicas. but anybody can do it. So gon on,
scramble your sex words, and find suitable mates.
If you want to, scramble yourself out there, every stale joke,
fart, chew, sneeze, and stomach rumble. If your trick no work
you better run. Everybody doing it, they all scramble in
together and the populations of the earth just better settle
down a nice even brown colour. Scrambles is the democratic way,
the way full cellular representation. Scrambles is the American
way.
I have suggested that virus can be created to order in the
laboratory from very small units of sound and image. Such a
preparation is not in itself biologically active but it could
activate or even create virus in susceptible subjects. A
carefully prepared jaundice tape could activate or create or
create the jaundice virus in liver cells, especially in cases
where the jaundice liver is already damaged. The operator is in
effect directing a virus revolution of the cells. Since DOR
seems to attack those exposed to it at the weakest point,
release of this force could coincide with virus attack. Reactive
mind phrases could serve the same purpose of rendering subjects
more susceptible to virus attack.
It will be seen that scrambled speech already has many of the
charictaristics of virus. When the speech takes and unscrambles,
this occurs compulsively and against the will of the subject. A
virus must remind you of its presence. Whether it is the mag of
a cold sore or the torturing spasms of rabies the virus reminds
you of its unwanted presence. "HERE ME IS."
So does scrambled word and image. The units are unscrambling
compulsively, presenting certain words and images to the subject
and this repetitive presentation is irritating certain bodily
and neutral areas. The cells so irritated can produce over a
period of time the biologic virus units. We now have a new virus
that can be communicated and indeed the subject may be desparate
to communicate this thing that is bursting inside him. He is
heavy with the load. Could this load be good and beautiful? Is
it possible to create a virus which will communicate calm and
sweet reasonableness? A virus must parasitise a host in order to
survive. It uses the cellular material of the host to make
copies of itself. in most cases this is damaging to the host.
The virus gains entrance by fraud and maintains itself by force.
An unwanted guest who makes you sick to look at is never good or
beautiful. It is moreover a guest who always repeats itself word
for word take for take.
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